


My One and Only You

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Beechwood [3]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Characters from other episodes, Co-hot tubbing in a naked Monkee pile, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Light Angst, Light BDSM, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Original Character(s), Peter shamelessly in his bunny pajamas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-11-14 08:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 55,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18049214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: Peter and Mike have been living in the same house together for two years, but in their first weeks living together as a couple, they find there's a lot they don't know about each other...Huge thanks to the Sunshine Factory website https://monkees.coolcherrycream.com/ for all the fantastic info and pictures! I couldn't have written any of these fics without that lovely treasure trove to mine.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Elements of their rl personalities have seeped in.

Mike opened the pad’s front door with the caution borne of two years’ communal Monkees’ living. Sure, the door was locked, suggesting no one was in, but in his experience, that meant nothing.

“Peter? Micky? Davy?” he called, hefting in as many grocery bags as he could at once, still keeping a wary eye out for…anything. “Rajah?” he added in a softer tone, remembering this time just under a week ago when he’d also come back from the store with an armful of groceries and seeing Micky sitting quietly in the middle of the floor had startled him.

Actually, Mike reflected, it wasn’t as much Micky sitting quietly that had alarmed him. More him sitting quiet and still except for brandishing an empty bottle with a rubber teat on it and his loudly whispered demand to know if Mike had got the message Micky had telephoned to the store, for Mike to pick up extra milk. Well, yeah, okay, not so much that in itself as what the baby’s bottle and the extra milk was for—the tiny premature baby tiger cub Micky had volunteered to wean and was keeping warm down his shirt. So, yeah, caution was never a bad thing in their world.

“Marco?” Mike broadened his call, but no answering, “Polo” came from anywhere in the pad. “I’ll just put all the groceries away all by myself then, yeah?” He could have done with a hand. Jeez, last week had been full. Full-on, too. While they’d all been pitching in to look after Rajah, they’d discovered Peter, while loving having a tiny tiger cub to stay, was vociferously opposed to live animal circuses. One was to be Rajah’s eventual home, owned by an old pal of Micky’s, for whom he was doing this favor. The friend was a connection from Micky’s childhood days, from a…project Micky had tried to keep hidden from the other Monkees.

He’d been wise, in Mike’s opinion, mainly because of the ammunition that Micky’s very early years unpicked-up pilot, _Jungle Boy_ , gave to a certain British member of their household. Said member who’d spent what little spare time he’d had last week trawling LA’s speciality and second-hand bookstores and studio archives and Micky’s family’s photo albums for pictures of a very young, very long curly-haired, very made-up-language talking…very vine-swinging Micky.

And the pictures he’d found… Mike had to laugh out loud again, right there alone in the empty pad. “It. Was. A. LOINCLOTH!” he bellowed, as they’d all been doing all week, in imitation of Micky. It might well have been, but it had looked exactly like…a diaper.

On top of that, and more notably, they’d played an entire week’s residency at the Duke Box, giving it their all and then some every night, to great success: they’d scored a two nights a week booking for at least a month, with option to renew. But, more importantly than that, last week had been the first week of himandPeter—the most wonderful week of Mike’s life, even though he still couldn’t really believe it and kept staring at Peter as if expecting the whole thing to vanish like a mirage, or be revealed as a gag.

And today, Monday, meant hisandPeter’s weekversary. Now they had time to draw breath, Mike planned to celebrate. He grinned as he hid the secret provisions in a place no one would find them: the space under the sink that housed the cleaning products. Odds of any of the other three even opening that cupboard? Slim to none.

He blamed his distraction, his reflecting on how amazing things were between himandPeter and how much more…intense they were going to be, after tonight, for making him almost miss the note. And that despite it being too big to miss, written on one of their large sheets of butcher paper and left in the middle of the living room floor where he skidded on it, barely righting himself.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, I.E. MIKE was written on it. Nothing else. Curious, he turned it over.

_We have taken your bass player. If you want to see him, come down to the beach about fifty yards from the flat rocks. (Not the make-out rocks.) Hurry or there will be no snacks and drinks left. And bring a bottle opener, as we always seem to lose ours._

_Signed, Anonymous and another slightly taller Anonymous._

As ransom notes went, it was one of the cutest he’d ever seen. The different handwritings on its alternate lines told him that both their neighbour Toby and her house guest Amanda must be behind the ‘kidnapping,’ or, rather, dragging Peter away from whatever he had been or should have been doing to take part in the residents vs. beachgoers beach volleyball tournament Davy and Micky had gone to play in earlier.

His mind again on the evening to come and the event he had planned as he made his preparations, Mike nevertheless changed and set out for the beach, cursing and turning back to grab a bottle opener then heading for the rocks. The game was in full swing, an umpire on a ladder chair, a big scoreboard, even cheerleaders, and elaborate elimination systems to whittle down the crowds of players. A tradition dating back decades, it was taken more seriously than most of the summer beach games, with each day’s losing team buying the winners drinks from Barney’s or the chuckwagon snack van that came at sunset. And wasn’t there some big dinner at the end of the ‘tournament’?

He couldn’t resist standing to watch Peter, cheering when he leaped high to spike, although he tried not to distract him and risk him letting the team down. Peter had on his burgundy shorts with the white stripe, a pair that were baggier fitting than his tiny red ones. Those had been banned, at least until Mike could control himself around them, or deal with other people seeing Peter in them. God, he must look goofy standing staring.

“Oi, Nesmith! Get your arse over here!”

Amanda. The slightly taller Anonymous of the note kinda put Mike in mind of a female Davy. Well, they were both British. He went to join her where she was lying propped up on her elbows. She slid her sunglasses to the top of her head, which made them hold back her swathes of beige-blonde hair.

Mike gestured to the game. “You out, all ready?”

“Oh, within minutes. Apparently you play a different version of netball here? Different rules? Like your idea of rounders?”

“Volleyball and baseball. Yeah.”

“All those balls…” She shook her head.

Mike still didn’t know what to make of her, the way her haughty accent or her full-lipped red pout made even the most everyday things sound… _filthy_. He didn’t really know her, hadn’t spent much time with her apart from the evening when they’d met and, well, gotten hot and heavy real quickly. She’d been busy settling in at work and in the city all last week, but even so she and Toby had come to two Monkees’ Duke Box performances.

Amanda patted the space next to her. “Here. Rest that surprisingly lush bum of yours.”

He smoothed his towel down and tried not to blush. “You got the day off?”

“Too right.” She shook the plastic beaker she held and took a sip. “I made sure my secondment deal awarded me all the UK bank holidays. Like today. It’s the Queen’s birthday.”

“Really?” Mike frowned. “I don’t think—”

“Hey, Lilibet has about three, so she must have one for the ex-colonies, don’t you think? Speaking of, we should toast? Bottoms up and all that?” She flipped over onto her stomach as she spoke, and Mike tried not to look at her backside in her clinging royal-blue swimsuit. Amanda stuck a hand into the coolbox and passed him a soda, then sat and knocked her beaker into it in a salute. Mike pointed at her drink with its floating orange and lemon segments visible through the plastic.

“What’s that, fruit cordial?”

“Pimm’s,” she corrected, indicating a plastic jug. “I’d offer you some, but it’s been scientifically proven that when Americans taste it, they make this face…”

He laughed at the sour-lemon scrunch of her full lips and slightly turned-up nose. “Like with Marmite?”

“Oh yes!” Amanda waved at Davy. “I’d almost forgotten you’re practically an honorary Brit.” Her face turned serious and she leaned toward him. “Be honest with me, Nesmith.  Do I smell of red sauce?”

“What?”

“Tomatoes.”

“ _What?_ ” he repeated, trying to understand the word. _Too-mar-toeze._

“One second…” Amanda flicked through a small book with lettered sections, one that reminded Mike of an address book. “Ah. Catsup? Ketchup?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I did think I smelled tomatoes. _Too-mar-toeze._ ” He got it now.

“It’s only my hair. Go on, sniff.” She lifted her hair into a bundle.

Mike took a cautious inhale. The aroma did seem confined to her hair. He couldn’t detect anything on her neck and refused to go lower.

“I have to rub ketchup into it every night and wrap it in cling film.”

“In…?”

“One sec…” But flicking through her dictionary, if that was what it was, didn’t yield anything. Amanda looked up, pouting. “That plastic film you put over leftovers. Bugger to get free of its tube.”

“Saran Wrap?”

“Thank you.” She pulled out a pencil and noted it down in two places. The front of her homemade book said AMANDA’S UK-US READY RECKONER and the back AMANDA’S US-UK READY RECKONER, making Mike grin.

“Why?” he asked, wincing as the locals’ team muffed an easy shot. He caught Peter’s eye when everyone regrouped, and waved.

“My hair goes green in the Willises’ whirlpool thingy. The chemicals?”

“Oh. I hadn’t realized it was…” Whatever was polite for dyed.

“Oh, you thought this rather clever mix of salted caramel and wild honey blonde was natural?” Amanda laughed. “I’ll pass that on to Vidal. And I might get it tinted back to its original color. A sort of brunette blonde.”

“So, brown?” Mike took a swallow of his drink.

“Oh, how brutal you are…I feel quite swoony.” She fanned herself, her thickly lashed hazel eyes wicked. “And feel free to take advantage of my ample chest. There’s enough for everyone.” She bent over, falling out of her swimsuit a little. “Do you feel like getting stuck into a juicy breast?”

“ _Amanda—_ ” Peter was looking over, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

“Ah. A leg man. Here.” She passed him a chicken leg from the open picnic box, a paper napkin wrapped around the bone end.

“Thanks?” Mike took a bite of the meat. “You’re not eating?”

“I might get my teeth into some juicy plums later, God willing…” She sighed, waving over at Toby and Micky. “Sorry for all the single entendre. I just feel so bloody pent-up I could burst! Is it always like this in LA? The sun, the sea? Makes people randy?”

“Okay, what?”

She held up a finger and skimmed through her book. “Horny! It’s the climate, yes? The beach. Like when you’re in the Med?”

Yeah, there was something about lazy afternoons in the sun and the sea before showering off and going inside, warm and aroused, for long, slow kisses and longer, slower sixty-nine, to fall into a snooze, wrapped in each other’s arms. Until having to rush out, to play a gig. Mike looked over at Peter. They’d have more time this week—starting tonight.

“Huh. _I_ haven’t had so much as a snog since that first evening.”

“Sn… Give me that book.” Mike wiped his hand on the damp washcloth Amanda shook from a plastic bag for him and leafed through her homemade translation guide. “ _Snog_ is Frenching? And that first eve… Oh. Ah.” She meant him, in the club, pulling her onto his lap and kissing her, then making out with her against her front door when he’d given her a ride home.

She leaned close. “Did I pass muster, by US standards? If so, any danger of an encore, and possibly an Act Two?”

“Ma’am—Amanda—I don’t want to shock or offend you, and I’d appreciate if you kept this to yourself, but Peter and I, we’re together now. In a relationship,” he clarified, looking ahead at the game and not at her.

“Since when?” she gasped. “Because if it was within two days of that night, Toby owes me five quid. Bucks, I mean.”

“ _What?_ You had a bet that—”

“Oh, not like a sweepstake, like the Grand National, for the whole street to take part in! Just Toby and me talking, and she won’t remember, anyway.”

True. She didn’t seem to retain a lot.

“And I _am_ offended, actually, Nesmith.” Amanda pouted right in his face. “That you kissed me when you were _obviously_ potty about Peter. I saw the way you looked at him. And for ages, I bet. Were you trying to make him jealous, move things along?”

“No! I just—”

“Oh, so it was because I came on strong.” She subsided back onto her towel. “And you couldn’t disappoint a lady. I got the pity smooch!”

“…liked kissing you,” Mike managed to finish.

“Oh. _Gosh._ Ohhh…does that mean you have an open relationship? Just that I haven’t been touched up since I got here, and now, I’m mid-cycle? It’s when women get—”

“Needy. Uh-huh.” He remembered…

“Yep. It’s all right for Toby. She has relief on tap…” She blew a kiss at Davy, who winked.

“Oh.” And that kinda went a little way toward explaining their relationship, at least one small facet of it. “Well, yeah, you know, Davy’s usually…willing to oblige?” God, what a conversation to be having, and with a chick, one he barely knew, and from a different continent, a different culture.

Amanda pursed her lips at the book Mike still held. “Look up ‘town bike’?”

Mike laughed. There was no need. “Micky?”

“It’s so _sweet_ of you to pimp out your housemates! One wonders, do you charge a fee and— _urrgh!_ ” was the noise she made when Mike pushed a soft buttered bread roll between her bee-stung lips to shut her up.

Spluttering and laughing, she pulled half the dinner roll free and stuffed it in Mike’s mouth.

“Hey.” Peter stood in front of them, looking from one to the other. “Am I…interrupting?”

“Never, babe.” Mike took his hand to pull him down, and Peter landed on his knees between Mike’s legs. He glanced sidelong at Amanda. “It’s okay. She knows. I told her.” Peter’s hand, that Mike still held, hidden from the players and spectators by Peter’s body, stiffened a little.

“Sworn to secrecy.” Amanda mimed locking her lips with a key and dropping it down her cleavage. “Girl Guides’ honor. And hey, it must have been good grass.”

 _Ger-arse._ Grass. Mike remembered what she’d said, something about him and Peter only being a half bag of good grass and nothing on TV away from making out.

“No. No chemical assistance at all,” Peter replied. He eyed the picnic in a way that told Mike he’d had no lunch. “May I?”

“Please.” Amanda leaned back on her hands in a way that stuck out her chest. “Help yourself to a nibble.”

Mike understood Peter’s confused look at him for an explanation. He gave a slight shake of his head. How to explain the crazy Brit chick and the contagious vibes that seems to spread from her to people near her? “Hey, Peter,” he cautioned as Peter bent over to see what…wares were on offer. “Don’t ruin your appetite. I got something special for you back at the pad later.”

“As the actress said to the bishop,” muttered Amanda. “And huh. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.” She rammed a straw in her drink and sucked up the dregs with a loud, rude slurp.


	2. Chapter Two

“This is so groovy! You should put in a pool next!” Micky’s voice came loud, to compensate for the hiss and splash of the shower Mike had rigged up on the outdoor faucet at the side of the building. This was rudimentary, a prototype, but there was more they do with this space around the side. Chairs—maybe a glider? Shrubs, tubs of flowers? Lord knew their household needed more areas of quasi-private space.

Making the shower gel do for his hair and body, Micky moved over for Davy to sluice himself down, and Mike, seeing the spray of water from the showerhead up high on its bracket was wide enough for three, thought he’d rinse off too. Save time.

“Or a hot tub, like the Willises’.” Clean enough, Davy stepped out of the trio. “But what were you saying? Why can’t we hang out at Barney’s?”

“Because Micky’s mom’s invited you for dinner.”

“It’s not her usual day. What’s the occasion?” Davy’s face, revealed when he finished dabbing it with his towel, bore a grin.

Mike understood. “Well, seems the neighbour girl’s gotten engaged? And so she and her fella are coming over to taste a few bits o’stuff Mick’s mom might make for the reception…so she thought she’d make a meal of it. Literally.” As excuses to feed them went, it was one of the flimsiest yet. Mike indicated Micky and Davy, trying to show them he and Pete wouldn’t be going.

“Wait a minute.” Micky emerged from under his towel, his hair wild. “Which neighbour girl?”

“It’s okay, it’s not the one you used to write songs to and serenade by moonlight.” Mike detonated the bomb with precision, nevertheless wincing at Davy’s raucous glee. He ushered Peter ahead of him into the pad and cupped his backside as he did so. God, he loved Peter’s ass. Literally. “I’d been meaning to get an outdoor shower up since last summer,” he muttered. “It wasn’t just…” _That I don’t want people on the beach copping an eyeful of you rinsing off down there out in the open. Much._

“Oh, and you two are staying the night there,” he dropped into the still-smoldering rubble of his bombshell.

“What? Give me one good reason!” Micky protested.

“Give ya eight, if ya like. Four apiece.” Mike indicated the chore board, whose slots now bore his name as doing most of the week’s designated tasks.

“Outta sight! You must really want the pad to yourself…ves.” Micky finally caught on, looking from him to Peter.

“What happened a week ago today, Mowgli?” Davy asked with a pointed look at the upstairs room.

“Week…oh. Huh. But even so—”

“Come on. Get ready. I’d best polish me maracas, yeah? And you grab the ladder to take? For the midnight serenade?” Davy dodged Micky’s wild swing and pushed him towards their downstairs room.

“Well, guess I should—” Peter jerked his thumb towards the outside faucet.

“No, go have a proper shower. Take your time.”

“Make myself pretty? Or are you joining me? For an improper shower?” Peter’s dimple deepened with his smile.

Much as Mike loved showering with Peter and hoped to enjoy a real bath or a Jacuzzi with him one day… “With the Two Stooges still on the premises? Nah. But change for dinner? I got you something special.”

“Oh.” Stepping close and rubbing the tip of his nose against Mike’s, Peter ran long fingers through Mike’s swoop of hair, pushing it from his eye. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Don’t be so sure there, babe.” It could have been a quip, a gag, but Mike’s tone held weight. He smiled, to lighten it, not wanting to put pressure or stress on Peter. “Go change? I left you some clothes out in the bathroom?”

When Peter made an obedient about-face for the shower, Mike smacked his ass and leaned in to bite his neck, just where it met his shoulder, the spot that drove Peter crazy. His tawny-eyed glance over his shoulder as he headed off said he knew what Mike was doing—and he’d provoked it.

“Out here?” he called a little later, coming out to where Mike, changed, was setting the table on the sundeck. His face said he approved. “Give me another minute?”

“You look fine.” Mike shook and blew out the match. It was too light still for a candle, really, but the sandalwood smelled nice.

“Really?” Peter looked down at himself, at the unbuttoned light blue shirt over darker blue boxer shorts, and nothing else. “This was all that was in the bathroom— _Oh._ Your favorite color, I see. And you’re in my favorite jeans, all soft and worn.”

Yeah, worn to the point of being tight. Front _and_ back. Mike couldn’t really wear them out of the pad now—he’d get arrested. But Peter liked them on him, especially when paired with one of Mike’s ‘macho’ motorcycle or garage tees, and that was good enough for Mike.

“Alone at last?” Peter cocked his head back at the den and the silence.

“Yeah.” Mike placed the bottle in its bucket of ice on the table and poured Peter a huge glass. “Here. Drink this.”

“Wine? No, I don’t really drink w…” He looked up at Mike, standing over him, the glass in his hand. “I guess I do today,” he mumbled, taking the full to the brim beaker. “To…”

“Us.” Mike gave a gentle tap of his half-full glass to Peter’s and stood, giving encouraging nods, until Peter had almost finished his drink to Mike’s sip. Which was when he refilled Peter’s glass. “You can drink that while I’m gettin’ the food.” It came out as only half a suggestion and, eyebrows raised, Peter had the glass to his mouth when Mike hurried back inside, and the liquid was half-gone when Mike reappeared moments later with a pan of soup and a dish from the oven.

“Is that…” Peter took a sniff as Mike ladled half into his bowl. “Creamy Jerusalem artichoke! Just like at Thyme & Season!”

“Exactly like at Thyme & Season.” Mike took his own dishful.

“You went all the way to Vine for soup?” Peter, settling yoga-legged on his chair, held his spoon poised.

“And mains. Well, main.” _The prices there…_ Mike lifted the foil from the dish to show Peter the stuffed eggplant. He refilled his glass for him. “And dessert. It’s in the icebox. Chocolate lime fondant with candied lime peel.”

“I _so_ dig that.”

“I know. And I thought we’d have it after.” He eyed Peter.

“After— _Oh._ ”

Mike saw the meaning dawn on Peter. _Their privacy, the evening…_ “Drink up,” he instructed, raising his chin at Peter’s glass. Looking a little startled and muttering again that he didn’t really drink wine, Peter did so, Mike joining him.

 _After._ Because they hadn’t yet. Oh, not for lack of wanting to—or at least Mike hoped. No, just lack of opportunity. He needed an unbroken stretch of time to, well… The words echoed, chiming variants on _break Peter in_ and _stretch_ and he shook himself.

“A lot of prep.”

That gleam in Pete’s eye—was he riffing on Mike’s thoughts? “Babe?” he queried.

“You prepped all this. You’re not, say, just feeling amorous after being out in the sun…and/or with Amanda.”

“Of course not.” Mike wondered if Pete had overheard their conversation. Pitied him, if he had, way that London loon carried on. Their soup finished, he sliced the eggplant in half and plated it for them both.

“No, I know. You made a lot of effort. But you were…close to her.”

Mike let that lie. Not worth answering.

“ _Seem_ close to her,” Peter continued, the tiny crease pleating his forehead showing his amended thinking.

“Yeah, I guess she has that effect on people. Some people? I feel… I dunno, like she’s a… Well, I don’t have a sister, so I can’t rightly say that, but like a cousin, or something? I guess she reminds me of my cousin Lucy.” _Huh._

“As ever, I feel Texas must be quite the place.” Peter grinned. “It’s legal between cousins there, right?”

An image of Amanda on his lap hovered, until Mike batted it away. “No, actually, it ain’t. Not like in Connecticut.” He pointed his fork at Peter.

“How would you know that? _I_ don’t even know that. _Why_ would you know that?”

Mike stopped Peter’s babble by feeding him some more of the roasted zucchini and mushroom. “And you don’t need to even think about things like that. Like that evening, or anything,” he began, when Peter was occupied chewing. “It’s you I want. I want _you_. Don’t doubt that. And after tonight, you shouldn’t. Won’t.” He passed Peter his wine, for him to swallow down the last of his cooked vegetable stuff with.

Peter curling a warm, strong hand around his neck pulled Mike closer, and Peter crushing his mouth to his made him hard in an instant. “You want me?” Peter murmured, against Mike’s lips.

“God, yes.”

“You mean you want to be my first? Take me over the threshold?” Almost before he’d breathed the last syllable, Peter caught Mike’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulled, nipping, then soothed away the sting with his tongue-tip. “Make me a man?” he finished, into Mike’s open mouth, his sandy eyelashes failing to shutter the wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Oh, you rotten little—”

“Tease?” Peter shook his head, close enough to Mike that his bangs tickled him. “I’m not teasing. I’m ready and…” He took Mike’s hand and placed it on his crotch. “…very willing.”

Mike resisted Peter’s attempts to wriggle Mike’s fingers into the placket of his shorts, but let Peter caress him, explore the contrast between the soft denim and the hard bulge it covered. When he took Peter’s mouth in a bruising kiss, one Peter returned, making it a duel, a duet, the sweetness and fruit taste struck him. _The wine._ He pulled away.

“Wow, babe.” His lips turned up in a grin. “You say you don’t usually drink wine…”

“It makes me…loose, I suppose you could say.” Peter chased Mike’s lips again. “In a different way to dope.”

“Randy.” Mike recalled the word from earlier. He gave a slight chuckle. “Whatever, shotgun. We are getting you upstairs. One minute…” He cleared the table, dumping the dishes and cutlery in the sink at record speed, and poured the remaining wine into a glass. He checked the doors and windows were locked and the phone off the hook. If either Micky or Davy was calling to relate some joke or story about the other, tough. This was hisandPeter’s night. He made time for a quick pull of Mr. Schneider’s string, needing reassurance, perhaps, more than advice this time.

“You only regret the things you don’t do,” the dummy/advisor informed him.

Really? So no one regretted having robbed a bank, or hi-jacked a plane, or— Should he try his usual ‘third time’s the charm’ tactic with the fifth Monkee?

“Come on!” Peter called, already halfway up the stairs. Forgoing his counseling session, Mike leaped to join him and Peter stopped, pushing back into him.

“ _Babe!_ ” Mike yelped, throwing an arm around Peter’s waist from behind. He nudged his hard-on into Peter, and a nip at the very tip of Peter’s ear had him shivering, stopping his teasing. “Weren’t you ever told not to mess around on the stairs? Quit it until we get to the top.” Mike’s whisper made Peter’s shiver deepen. They reached the room together. Mike hadn’t done much here, just gotten another sandalwood candle, which he now lit, and brought up a couple of Peter’s favorite LPs, one of which he put on the turntable, volume low.

The shadows and the last of the sunlight turned Peter into a living statue, one handsome enough to dry Mike’s mouth and who stood still for Mike to strip him of his shirt and boxers, then fell back on the bed at Mike’s gentle push. Mike pulled his T-shirt off and joined him. “ _Sugar,_ ” he breathed against Peter’s lips, starting his feast there with a soft, slow mapping of Peter’s mouth for as long as he could before it turned into long, deep kisses.

He loved how Peter was never a passive partner but returned kiss for kiss, touch for touch, like now, pressing himself into Mike’s chest and rubbing when Mike dragged his coarse hair over Peter’s sensitive nipples, heightening the sensations and conveying each one to Mike in the gasps and squeaks Mike caught in his mouth.

Mike cupped the sides of Peter’s head, tangling his fingers in Peter’s silky golden-brown hair, admiring the reddish sheen the candlelight lent it. Peter’s coloring, his freckles, struck him for the first time: if he didn’t live at the beach, get sun almost all year, would he be more of a redhead? What a stupid thought at a time like this.

“Nerves.”

He didn’t know if he or Pete had said that, or if he’d imagined it. And if he had, which one of them was he referring to? “We are getting this done,” he warned, his forehead against Pete’s, the tips of their noses together. “I, well, wanted us to come together, but I think I should bring you off first, take the edge off for ya.”

“Or together to start with?”

Mike knew what he meant, could see the image as clear as if it was in front of him—them, on their sides, head to cock, the act hot as fuck—yet the most fun Mike had ever had in bed. They tended to play copycat to warm up, but their strokes and caresses soon became something akin to a game, with them using hands and mouths almost in call and response, challenging who could take the other deeper or harder or faster. Mike had started sliding wet fingers along Peter’s cleft as they indulged, and lightly circling his tight ring of muscle. He wanted Peter to get used to touch there, not to tense up when he felt it, and it also made Peter thrust harder and deeper, and brought him to a wild, heart-stopping climax, Mike barely clinging on for the ride. So, win all round.

“Nah. I won’t be able to stop. You’re too good at making me come,” was his rueful admission, one which elicited that little-giggle from Peter that Mike loved. “And I want to concentrate on you.”

“Finally!” Peter gave an impatient wriggle. “I wondered if I was in any danger of getting head.”

“Oh, you’re flirtin’ with danger all right,” Mike replied, raising a finger in warning. One he knew Peter would nip at it…and suck into his mouth. His suction was deep and long. “That a prompt?” he asked. “’Cause I don’t need no cueing in, nor no instruction.” He wondered anew at how his accent thickened, during sex with Peter, became smoky, Peter said. He’d also said once that, after midnight, it was like dark honey dripping from a knife blade. Mike hadn’t quite understood that, but then he hadn’t been as high as Pete.

Peter sucked more of Mike’s fingers into his mouth, tonguing them and gazing into Mike’s eyes all the while. Pictures formed in Mike’s mind, whether of their own volition or put there by Peter, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. It was all good. Yeah, he could start like that, lying between Peter’s toned, tan legs, take his dick deep and breach him with a finger, sinking deep. Mike knew he could curl it just so, and that it wouldn’t take much gentle stroking of Peter’s gland to make him shoot off like a rocket, his climax hitting him like a bolt of lightning, making him pulse down Mike’s throat. Mike could almost feel Peter’s taut, tight belly flattened beneath his face, sheened in sweat and quivering with aftershocks.

Maybe in a bit. Mike leaned back for Peter to half-rise and take a gulp of wine. He wanted to hold Peter closer than that when he prepped him for his first time.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the warning above says, Mildly Dubious Consent.

“C’m here, babe.” Mike settled mostly on his back and pulled Peter to lie on his front against him, snuggled under Mike’s arm. “Love kissing you,” he admitted, starting a series of sweet caresses of his lips against Peter’s, gentle, as if coaxing Peter into following his lead. And perhaps he was. Not that Peter seemed reluctant, or even to need any teaching, the way he turned the kisses into longer, easy brushes of his tongue against Mike’s before stroking his tongue in and out of Mike’s mouth, his rhythm smooth and his meaning unmistakable.

Mike grinned. “Other way round, shotgun.”

“Oh? So we are going…head to head?”

“No. And stop your smartassing.” Mike slapped Peter’s smart ass for him, cupping its taut roundness after. “Don’t ruin the mood there, babe. Feel under here.” He raised an eyebrow at the pillow, and Peter slipped his hand under it, to emerge with a small long-nozzled blue and white plastic tube.

“Oh.” He examined it. They’d had their version of ‘the talk’—the need for proper lube. “Not Vaseline?”

“Nah. That’s oil-based and this is water. I know how particular you are about your resin for your strings and your wax for your board.”

“You’re saying I’m all natural?” Peter looked down the length of his nude body. “Or… _au naturel_?”

“Quit tryin’ to distract me.” Was he? Sure seemed so. Mike unscrewed the cap from the tube Peter still held and took the gel from him. He tucked Peter’s head into the crook of his neck. Peter could nuzzle there and Mike could bite down on the spot where Peter’s neck met his shoulder to distract him if…necessary. He slicked his fingers, ignoring a Peter wisecrack about the virgin tube, and brought them to Peter’s rear.

“I’m starting small and slow,” he promised, running his forefinger around the flex of muscle protecting the hole. “Just one—”

“No. Start with at least two!” Peter’s order and him pushing back onto Mike’s hand gave Mike the shock of his life. No, that came not one second later when Peter’s twisting and wiggling impaled him on two of Mike’s fingers—deep. “ _Ohhh._ ” His breathy groan of satisfaction came loud and clear when he raised his face to look Mike in the eyes. “I fucken _love_ getting fingered,” he moaned, his words sex-drenched.

“ _Jesus_ , babe!” Mike couldn’t help exclaiming, trying to hold still as Peter pleasured himself on Mike’s hand. He couldn’t. The tight heat of Peter’s ass, and the feel of its ridges against Mike’s fingers; Peter’s body, moving like that, and his beautiful face already flushing, reflecting his pleasure, was too alluring. Without removing his fingers, Mike repositioned Peter on his back and shifted to lie over him, spearing him deeper, opening his fingers inside him—as much as the constriction allowed. Peter might have done this before, but not recently, as far as Mike could tell. Peter drew up his legs, his feet flat on the sheet his hands and toes were gripping.

Caught out again by this man, Mike had to smile, despite his own discomfort. His cock was about to rip a hole in the crotch of his worn jeans. He pushed higher up the bed, nearer to Peter’s ear. “Remember the first time you blew me, what you told me?” he whispered.

Peter slowed his ride and opened his hazy eyes wider. “That it was true, that everything’s bigger in Texas?”

“Uh-huh. And…” Mike stopped to laugh, the jerk his shoulders gave ending in him shoving deeper than he’d intended into Peter, who didn’t seem to object, if his jagged moan was any clue. “And when I got hard again, minutes later? You said, so that was accurate too—”

“The South _shall_ rise again. Uh.”

“Think you’re the only one who can joke about the other’s home state? ’Cause I have to say that you, here, like this…” He paused, taking in the glorious pink-flushed Peter in front of him, half propped up on the pillows beneath his shoulders and head, grinding down on Mike… “Like your state’s motto, you’re _full of surprises_. Ready for another?”

He gave Peter no time to reply or even process the question, but eased a third finger into his still-tight channel and bent low to take his erect cock into his mouth. Just for a minute, just to suck Peter’s length and swallow his pre-cum. He pulled off in a long lick up the shaft and around the head. “How are you?” he whispered.

“Full,” came in a languorous sigh before Peter raised his head a little. “How am I?”

“Tight,” Mike breathed, rubbing his knuckles against Peter’s whorls and ridges. “Tight as fuck. Tight to fuck. And I can’t wait. Gonna make you mine.” He paused, reading the sudden shuttering of Peter’s face. “Hey. I’ll take care of you. You know that. I’ll make it good for you. Sweet for you.” He was babbling, he knew, but not sure how to handle this. Whatever this was. But he eased his fingers free.

Peter’s hands scrunched the sheet beneath him tighter. “I’m…” He shrugged and his teeth worried his lower lip. He turned his head, just a little, dipping it a tad too, but not quickly enough to prevent Mike seeing the look in his eyes, one he found hard to interpret.

The angle of Peter’s head, averted like that…what…? Mike remembered. That dream he’d had! Peter had come to his bed, just like that, they’d gotten into it and then Peter had cried off—but not from shyness or disinclination and he hadn’t exactly been playacting. Mike sought to remember more details. Peter, saying he didn’t know what to do. Mike, reassuring him, gentling him…only for Peter to reveal he liked it hard and strong, low-down and dirty.

That jostled against another memory, of something real and tangible this time—their first time in bed together, Peter all over the place and Mike threatening to smack the sass out of his ass before he tapped it. He’d slapped at Peter’s rear most every chance he’d gotten since, playful but hard swats, and Peter liked it. Liked it… _or needed it_?

Whatever this was, it was significant. “Is this…” _What usually happens?_ “You’ve gotten, well, this far…” _And no further._ For whatever reason. _Guilt. Fear. Cowardice. Shame._ Mike had felt them all.

The tiny nod Peter gave in reply could have been classed as coy, but still Mike detected some light, some mote—some _something_ —in his gaze. All he had to go on now was instinct, borne of his innate knowledge of Peter, even if he didn’t fully understand this, didn’t quite get the link between the freewheeling hippie boy, with his joy and peace to all view of life, and him like this, needing and lacking. And not just in the here and now—had his cravings ever been met? To navigate here, all Mike had was an understanding of some of the layers making up Peter’s soul. He had no other map or compass. _No other option._

“Well, not this time.” Mike smirked when Peter’s head shot up. “This time, it’s getting done. So I suggest you finish that drink.” He shoved his face close to Peter’s. “Make no mistake. It’s happening. I’m claiming you. Claiming this.” He got a hand to the side of Peter’s ass—all he could, with Peter half-seated—and squeezed, hard and possessive. Mike moved from the bed to finally strip off his jeans, his protective barrier, making a production of first undoing the oversized metal buckle then whipping his thick leather belt free of the waistband and pulling it straight between his hands before tossing it aside. Peter followed each movement, his eyes as round as saucers, especially when Mike’s cock, red and swollen with wanting, sprang free.

Mike nodded at the beaker on the night stand. “Drink your wine.”

He waited for Peter to comply, reading his response in the thrumming of the nerves under his skin and the goose bumps pebbling it, hearing it in the hitching of his breath and seeing it in the brightness that turned his eyes to topaz. He relished surprising Peter when he straddled him, kneeling over him. “Get me ready. I’m gonna need to be harder to take you, you being cherry an’ all.” He closed the gap between them and ran his thumb over Peter’s lips to show him what he meant, that Peter should open up and take him in.

And when he did, sucking Mike into his mouth, Mike groaned. Peter opened his throat to him, but Mike didn’t thrust as hard as he wanted. He still couldn’t. Soon. Peter held his gaze, swallowing him that little bit deeper. “Told you before, but that’s such a beautiful sight. You look so good taking my cock,” he husked. “Can’t wait to see it buried deep in your virgin ass.” He eased free.

“You’re…” Peter got a hand to his mouth to cough and speak normally. “So big.”

“Yeah.” Mike jerked his dick once, twice. “You’ll feel me. And for a while.”

He paused, trying to disguise the fact he was doing so. He still didn’t know for sure what Peter was about. If this was some sort of roleplaying, then fine, Peter wanting to do that was okay by Mike. If it wasn’t, was some deeper need, still fine. Mike would meet it, fulfil it. But Peter looked good to go. Hot to trot, even. Managing a wry chuckle despite his extreme discomfort, Mike swiped his thumb over the head of his dick, then over Peter’s lips, leaving them shining.

It only took him a second to coat his aching, straining dick in the KY, then pull Peter lower and flatter in the bed so the pillows no longer propped up his upper body. Mike reached around for one to wedge under Peter’s lower hips, getting him just right to kneel between his spread legs. He held the lube up, for Peter to see, then brought it to Peter’s exposed and widened hole, to squirt a dollop inside him. Peter shivered, although Mike doubted the gel was that cold. Certainly not cool enough to send fine tremors under Peter’s skin like that.

“Hey.” Mike made sure he’d gotten Peter’s attention. “Quit mangling the sheet there. Hold on to the headboard bar. Don’t want you yankin’ my hair out or scratchin’ my back to ribbons when I take you.” He wouldn’t mind either of those things, but he sensed Peter needed more directives or parameters or what the hell ever. _Next time._ “I can truss your wrists to it in under ten seconds if need be.”

Peter nodded, scrambling to obey, and Mike leaned up and over him to kiss him—forcing his tongue into Peter’s mouth at the exact same moment he thrust his cock deep into his ass. His full length, all in one long, tough slide. And God, if that perfection of scalding heat and slippery tightness didn’t almost have him coming right then and there, his orgasm charging from the soles of his feet to gather force in his balls, clamouring to burst from him into Peter’s body.

But that the constriction was due to resistance was shown by Peter arching up under Mike, his tense, taut body one long, mute bow of rejection.

Normally, Mike would have slid free, withdrawn, but this…this wasn’t ordinary. It classified as _extraordinary_ to feel Peter reshaping around him or him re-forming Peter—he wasn’t sure. “Hey.” Mike leaned low so he could slide his hands along Peter’s tense arms and curl his hands over Peter’s fingers gripping the headboard. “Look at me.” The look in Peter’s eyes was somewhere between dazed and agonized and it was heart-ripping to feel the instinctive reaction of his body to an invader. _To be that invader._ But Mike had a job to do. “It’s okay, kid.” Mike put a smirk in it. “Fight it if you have to. Fight _me_. Go ahead. Just keep your eyes on me. Don’t forget that.”

At which Peter struggled and even bucked, as fierce and strong as a bronc, trying to expel him, and the seconds it took before he quieted were some of the longest of Mike’s life. But it was all worth it when Peter slowed, then stilled, then melted into him. Accepted him…accepted his dominance. It was the sweetest sensation Mike had ever experienced, feeling Peter’s muscles relaxing, group by group.

“Christ! Fuck! Holy fuck, Mike!”

Mike was so glad they had the house to themselves—Peter’s yell nearly deafened him. Dragging his hands down to Peter’s hips, he pulled out and forged in just once at a slow and soft pace as a courtesy to his newly breached partner before he lunged hard and sure, angling his entry to hit that spot he’d told Peter about. He managed three more hard, fast thrusts, rubbing firm, fierce strokes over the gland before Peter, once more twisting and writhing, still crying out, clamped down on Mike’s cock.

“You’re doin’ good, boy,” he praised. “Now a little reward…” He got a hand to Peter’s dick, ignored until now, but now pulsing, ready to blow.

Him working that in tandem with his pounding strokes against Peter’s prostate had Peter wrapping his legs around Mike, almost slamming himself down onto Mike. “Yeah. That’s it, babe.” Mike could hardly manage breath, let alone words. Peter’s arms, still clutching the headboard, were shaking violently. Mike shifted onto his side, bringing Peter with him, facing him, and Peter clung to Mike instead, wrapping his legs around his hips once more, helping impale himself.

“ _God!_ ” Peter cried. Finally a word Mike could make out after the nonstop stream of nonsense syllables Peter had been howling and yelling for the last minute or two.

It was harder to jack Peter in this position, making Mike readjust. He tried to interpret the frown on Peter’s face. “Hey, it takes as long as it takes to get you broken in. Don’t you worry none about me. I got self-control. I’m gonna see to you first. Keep looking at me.”

Maybe it was the last order, or the pressure of Mike’s hand on Peter’s cock, or his strokes against that bulb-shaped gland—Mike could certainly feel the latter—but whatever it was, Peter came seconds later, his climax surging up and roaring through him. His channel throbbed all around Mike’s cock, nearly strangling it and ripping Mike’s release from him from one second to the next, harder and quicker than he’d ever come before. It left him dizzy and seeing stars. He pulsated for long, long whited-out beats, his cum filling Peter’s ass, as Peter spurted between them.

If Peter’s noises were harsh guttural cries, seemingly torn from his depths, then Mike’s were nothing more than low growls and purrs, a response to every nerve ending at once firing pleasure. “ _Yeah,_ ” he finally muttered, once they’d both stuttered to stillness, raking his hand from Peter’s hip up his back to his head, to bring his face close to Mike’s.

Still panting, as was Mike, Peter had kept his eyes open, as instructed, and they were so, so dark, the pupils huge and the irises tiny rings around them. He looked dazed, almost lost. Mike backed off a little to pull free, finding it more difficult than he’d expected, as if his body didn’t want to quit Peter’s, or Peter’s to let him go. Freed from Mike’s hold, Peter flopped onto his front, his face down in the sheet, looking as though he’d never be able to face Mike again. Well, that Mike could understand. He had no clue whatsoever what to do next either.


	4. Chapter Four

There was so much Mike wanted to say, so many reassurances and so much comfort he wanted to give, but he didn’t. All he could do was to move, forcing his weakened limbs to obey him. He crouched over Peter and bent low, to one perfect ass cheek. The bite mark he’d given Peter on his hip over a week ago had faded to nothing: Peter was due another. Mike bit and sucked, _branding_ , he realized, when Peter shuddered and undulated beneath him. He slapped the other cheek, hard, making the echoes in the room break up the gasps of their panting.

“You did great,” he praised, keeping the rough edge to his voice, a voice he was glad he had under control.

When Peter was absorbed, mostly in playing music, or writing music, or sometimes in reading or writing something, he seemed to be in another plane, removed from this one. Mike knew because he’d often watched him come back, seen the ethereal look fade from his eyes and awareness fill them, as though his consciousness was returning, settling him back down in the here and now. What Mike had never seen was the same thing happen with Peter’s body, but he was observing it now, seeing it sort of solidify or come to.

Peter flipped back over, settling his gaze on Mike. He would. He was brave. Braver than Mike? _In some ways._ Cowardly, right then, right there, Mike took inventory of Peter’s body instead. He was a mess. Still flushed in patches, shining with sweat in others, his hair matted, and his chest smeared with his own cum. Well, Mike wasn’t much better, he betted. At least their breathing was level again.

Still with his gaze pinned to Mikes, Peter reached out as if striking, quicker and more sudden than Mike would’ve guessed possible, given the circumstances, and made them both messier in pulling Mike to him, to hold him close. It had Mike smiling—it was something they’d gotten into over the last week, both wanting to take the other in their arms, to be the big spoon as Micky accused Mike of always being. It was usually a quick tussle between him and Pete, the winner claiming holding rights. Peter’s chest sucked in under Mike as Peter took a breath.

“Well, _fuck_ ,” he exhaled. “And you did. You did it.” His voice still came a little thready but close to his normal baritone. “I’m a man now.” Peter puffed out his chest, almost dislodging Mike. And he laughed, the sweetest sound Mike had ever heard.

And just like that, in Peter’s still dazed but beautific smile and Mike’s answering slightly rueful grin as they stared at each other, things—they—were back to normal. Mike hoped.

Peter dropped a soft kiss on Mike’s lips, as though Mike were the one needing reassurance. Perhaps he was. Whatever, he kissed back, cupping Peter’s face in hands that wanted to tremble, and tried to pour all his feelings, all his caring, all his love into the touch of his lips to Peter’s, hoping he understood.

Before Mike had done thinking how to frame his question, to ask Pete if he was okay, what he needed next, Peter was stretching out his hips and legs before wriggling himself and Mike higher up the bed, to rest their heads on the pillows.

“’Sthis?” he inquired, reaching not too steady hands up under the pillow and pulling a paper bag free.

“Oh crap! I forgot. I…well, got you a versary thing.” Mike was furious with himself. He’d had a romantic scenario all planned. Candles, wine, gift…the perfect seduction, if all those magazine articles were to be believed. And of course, Peter had wrong-footed him. Twice really.

Giving a tiny rub of the tip of his nose to the end of Mike’s, Peter pulled his arm free and half-sat. He traced the name of the store, in its curly script on the bag. It was one he enjoyed browsing in. Peter untucked the fold, shaking free the long string of beads. His mouth forming an “oh”, he held them up to the candlelight, running his fingers over the different-sized polished stones and spheres of carved wood in all shades of brown from caramel to oak.

“Necklace,” Mike muttered with a shrug. His shopping trip to the Strip earlier had taken most of his gig money from last week, but Peter was worth every cent.

“Love beads,” corrected Peter, stroking them once more before dropping them over his head and twisting them into a triple-stranded chain. “And I do. These especially. They’re so beautiful. Perfect. Wow. Thank you.” The last word was lost in the kiss he gave Mike.

Mike reached for a paper handkerchief from his night stand and dabbed at Peter, who soon took over his own clean-up, looking more like himself with every minute that passed. “You okay?” Mike had to ask. Peter nodded, bright and happy, although he had to be aching. God knew Mike was. “Is…there stuff we should talk about?” Mike persisted, owing it to Pete. To them.

“Or…learn about.” Peter settled back down, avoiding the wet patch. “As we go along.” His smile was brighter than the sun, making Mike’s face light up too as he reflected again on how smart Peter was. And how _full of surprises_.

He pounced on Pete, winning this wrestle bout and the right to hold him close. Where he’d stay for a long time, if Mike had anything to do with it, for them to learn and understand and love—as they went along.

Mike pressed tiny soft kisses into the top of Peter’s head where it lay nestled on him, his caresses getting softer and tinier until he fell asleep, seconds after Peter did. Peter, his mate. His marvel. His _miracle_.

* * * *

The throbbing in his bladder prodded Peter awake the next morning. Pulling free from under Mike’s octopus-on-its-back sprawl, Peter made for the room’s tiny en suite, cataloging the other, less everyday physical sensations assaulting him. His brain had turned into a tiny dried-sponge version of itself, shrunk down in the middle of his skull, yet liable to be dislodged and hit the sides or top of his cranium if he didn’t move his head slowly and steadily. His tongue too was shrunken and desiccated, and yet the roof and sides of his mouth had caved in on it, threatening to stick to it and imprison it. _Hangover, then. Dehydration._ A pint or two of water would fix that.

But his ass… _Jeez._ Anyone would think he’d had nine inches of rock-hard dick rammed up it. Oh, wait, he had, and _that_ needed thinking about as well as feeling. “ _You’ll feel me. And for a while,_ ” Mike had promised. The echo of that drawled vow plus the memory of the overwhelming physical sensations Mike had caused had Peter spasming, grabbing onto the edge of the basin in sheer reaction and to stay upright. His rectum clenched on the phantom feel of Mike, sending an aftershock rippling through him. _Huh._ Yes, really needed thinking about.

So okay, pint of water for rehydration and mug of willow-bark tea for inflammation and soreness. _Rawness. Like a chorus._ The proud possessor of said monster dick that had fucked Peter senseless, had left him gaping and aching, still lay spread-eagled on his back. Mike looked…lighter, somehow, asleep; younger, even his eyelashes more relaxed and seeming longer than they did in the day.

Peter took the opportunity to stroke down Mike’s nose. He liked it, longer, slimmer and more defined than his own. _Bladelike, perhaps._ He liked the slight cleft to Mike’s chin too, analogous to Peter’s dimple.

“Urggh.” Mike swatted at his chin, and Peter’s hand. “Quittit. C’ffee,” came in a rasp.

“Huh. So much for tender loving aftercare,” Peter groused.

“Afterc’ffee.” Mike slitted open one eye. “Yuuh?”

“Fine.”

Mike wasn’t conscious, wasn’t _compos mentis_ , didn’t recall what had happened, what they’d done. He would, once awake.

Peter realized he was naked, except for his new beads. He slid into a pair of jeans and pushed his arms into a shirt, then removed the love beads. He’d keep them for, if not the bedroom, then for best. Because they were. Not knowing if he could manage the bump of each spiral step, Peter slid down the bannister on his stomach to the kitchen, to fill the tea kettle and coffeepot and a big glass with water, the latter of which he gulped down, all while the bite-mark on his ass cheek throbbed.

Waiting, he meditated in tree pose, ordering his thoughts. So, penetrative anal sex. _That happened. How do I feel? Sore._ Holding the Vrksasana was difficult with still-stretched, still-stinging tissues. The act itself. _How did I feel? Hit by pleasure. Like, a really big truck of pleasure._ Before, what Mike did to make it happen. _How do I feel about that? Relaxed. Happy. Wanting to grin like an idiot. Wonder if Mike is? Will? So, that’s that._

Thoughts sorted, Peter lowered his leg to the floor. The time-out had helped mentally, but drinking water hadn’t done much for his brain’s looming dry-headache. Caffeine would do more, yet the coffeepot took an age to deliver. Peter contemplated the tin of coffee. Ingestion wasn’t confined to one route… He took a deep sniff of the coffee, then tipped out a small, thin line of grains onto the counter and chopped it even finer with a sharp knife. The noise outside made him pause and seconds later, the door banged open in a way that announced _Micky_.

“You’re back early. Oh…” Peter noticed the time. “Guess I’m late. Hi.” He bent his head to the counter.

“ _Peter…_ ” Micky approached. “What are you doing?”

Peter inhaled the line. “Snorting coffee.” He rubbed the grains he’d failed to hoover up onto his top gum.

Micky clicked his fingers. “Oh, man. You all out of coke?”

Peter thought for a second. “Yes.”

“ _Shit_ , I was kidd—” Micky grabbed Davy, coming in and closing the door behind him. “Guess what Pete was… Pete, what are you doing now? Are you _eating bits of wood_?”

Peter moved the willow to his cheek to speak. “Chewing some bark, yes.” He didn’t bother explaining, just made sure to swallow the juice and saliva the action released. He parked the pulp in his cheek again to drink more water, deep-breathing to give him strength for Micky and Davy.

“You okay?” Davy glanced at the debris from the night before, then at Peter rinsing out the wine bottle and silver foil containers while he waited for the kettle. His gaze landed on the coffeepot brewing. “You making Mike breakfast?”

Peter heard the _Nebenstimme_ , Davy providing his own counterpoint to his own _Hauptstimme_ : “he should be looking after you.”

“Yes. He did. He is. He will.” He tried to answer all Davy’s unvoiced questions and concerns at once.

“Sure you’re all right?” Davy lowered his voice, even though Micky was in the john.

“Yes. Very. I’m sore, but sure.” Peter let the idiot grin have its way with him, and after a widening-eyed second, Davy chuckled and clapped Peter on the back.

“You _told_ him?” Micky stood before them. “You said—”

“What, about you losing the bet and going to serenade that bird after all? Said I’d keep it to meself, didn’t I?” Davy’s tone was pure innocence. “But you didn’t say I couldn’t tell them on the phone, though.”

“But you didn’t,” Peter replied, taking alternate sips of newmade black coffee and herbal tea.

“Not my fault it was engaged and I have to relay the message in person instead.” Davy left them figuring that out as he stretched up for his tea caddy. “Yeah, his old flame. Only, since Mick’d moved away, she doesn’t have the street-facing room anymore? She swapped rooms with her big sister. Also an unmarried neighbor girl.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad,” Peter commented.

“Her _really_ _big_ big sister.” Davy indicated the size, one that seemed impossible outside a circus. “Who now thinks Micky—”

“Mail’s come! I saw it! Looked important.” Micky jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“So why didn’t you bring it in?”

“I refer you to exhibit A…” A briefly black-gowned and white-wigged Micky directed Peter’s attention to the chore board, which announced mail was Peter’s job today.

Peter took another gulp of willow-bark tea and, feeling better, opened the door to bring in the post from the table. Usual stuff, couple for him, the bigger one of which he opened and scanned through. _Oh, interesting._ His group had been talking about—

“ _What’s that?_ ”

Peter rushed in at the note in Mick’s voice. Mick was pointing at a large sheet of shiny white paper on the floor.

“It just appeared, you guys! It wasn’t there before!” He clutched Peter.

“I didn’t see it, no.” Although, he’d hardly been looking or aware of his surroundings. “Was it caught on the door and when I opened the door just now, it wafted it free?”

“Oh yeah. I guess.” Mystery solved, Micky stooped to pick up the paper and turned it over.

“I thought it would be tabloid. Not ledger,” Peter observed, pleased he’d been right about the paper’s layout.

“Huh?” Micky spared him half a glance, his attention on the poster. “Look, Davy, horseback riding! Is this yours?”

“Nah. What is it?” Davy peered over at the gaudy picture. “Is that a cowboy? Some sorta show?”

“It’s a rodeo! Here in LA.” Micky pointed to the date and venue. “Memorial Sports Arena, this weekend. Yeah, I think I saw big posters up about it. And some of the guys at the beach mentioned it.”

“So who put it through the door?” Davy wondered.

“Did it come free with one of your mags? Like, _Cowpoke-Me Monthly_?” Micky dodged Davy’s half-hearted punch.

“Rodeos are Texas things, right?” Davy looked from Mick to Peter. “So I bet someone pushed the poster through for Mike, ’cause it’d interest him.”

Peter, shifting the large envelope to under his elbow and disposing or distributing the rest of the mail, was about to explain exactly who the communique was from, for whom and why, but a familiar voice stopped him.

“Will all of you quit yammerin’ and one of you fix coffee?”

 _All of you. One of you._ Peter swallowed his annoyance at being lumped in with the others—Mike wasn’t truly awake yet. “It’s ready,” he called up to him where he stood at the top of the stairs, one hip hitched in the pose that made Peter itch to sketch him. Not him exactly, but his lines, some straight, some curved. _Legs, hip. Nose, lip._

“Mike, look.” Micky held up the colorful poster. “The rodeo here in LA? Someone put this under the door for you just now—”

“ _The hell?_ ” Mike, who’d been coming down the stairs, froze. “Someone— You see h—who? See anyone? Any of you?”

“No,” Mick replied, and Davy shook his head. Peter shook his too.

“So you wanna go?” Micky, either oblivious to Mike’s vibes or needing the awkwardness bridged, pointed to the text announcing something about the event being open to riders from out of state, competitors from different circuits.

“I… No.” Mike reached them and his hands shot out, as if to snatch at the poster, but he stuck them in his pockets instead, then busied himself at the counter, his back to them. “No, I don’t. No.”

“On what grounds?” Peter spoke to get them all over the silence Mike’s words and tone had caused, and because he was curious. Maybe Mike could join in with his group. They were—

“Do I need a reason? Fine.” Mike inhaled. “It’s dumb. Lame. Stupid. I’m just not interested.”

He turned, clutching his coffee, his face set to bored and his tone to dismissive, but something bleak, _lost_ , almost, in Mike’s eyes caught at Peter’s heart. Caught at it, and make it ache.

And it also made Peter burn…to understand what was really going on.


	5. Chapter Five

“So don’t none o’ya even bother mentioning it to me. We clear?” Mike shot them all a raised-eyebrow look from over his coffee mug.

“About what?” Micky deadpanned before Peter could reply. “Oh geez, man, lighten up, couldya? I’d have thought you’d be in a good mood after yesterday. You know, having the pad to yourself…and all.”

Mike put his cup down in a slow, deliberate gesture and stalked over to Micky. “Oh you did, did ya?” He struck, quick as a snake, pretending to knuckle into Micky’s curls, but landing lower, to tickle his sides. With an, “And you’d be right, nutjob!” he reduced Mick into a squirming curled-over ball in seconds. “I am,” he repeated, his gaze warm when it tangled with Peter’s.

In meditation, that regrouping Mike did, making himself concentrate on the now, would have been called centering. Peter copied him, shelving his irritations and, yes, concerns, to stay in the moment. He took heart from the soft, shared grin curving Mike’s lips. The life of the pad and them as a group didn’t allow much bigger intimacies than that during their busy communal days.

Making his action look idle, meaningless, Peter turned the poster so its plain white back showed instead. The questions and doubts he had would have to wait for a better time and circumstances, one in which Micky wasn’t squealing for mercy and yelling uncle, then having to be disarmed of his water pistol for attacking after truce was called.

“So, we’re all happy?” Peter pulled a white-cloth-waving Micky out from the clothes closet where he’d retreated.

“He is. His new dolly bird’s coming to the gig tonight. And he’s meeting her for lunch too.” Davy’s eye roll suggested Micky had mentioned this a few times.

“Yeah,” Micky breezed. He breathed on his nails and polished them on his shirt. “I gotta call her…” He tutted on finding the phone was off the hook., and, as soon as he replaced the receiver, it rang. “Oh, hi, Sandra! I was just… Oh, the phone was… Uh-huh…Oh, but… Huh?”

Davy winced for him and went to pour his tea.

“ _Which one’s she?_ ” Peter mouthed, and tried to correlate Davy’s clawing at the air and stroking what seemed to be an imaginary mustache with any chicks Micky knew.

“I…guess I’m having lunch here after all.” Micky came to join them and slumped at the kitchen table. “Sandra dumped me. I don’t get it! I’ve been so busy all last week. She knew that, that we were playing every night and I couldn’t see her. Then she said she came to the Duke Box on Sunday and saw me, but I didn’t see her? So she’s ditching me ’cause I have lousy eyesight?”

“Ooh, meow,” came softly from Davy. “More probably because she saw you with Lola? Or even saw you leave with her? For the second Sunday in a row?”

Mike clapped Micky on the shoulder. “Let’s just hope Lola didn’t see Sandra, right?”

 _Not a mustache, whiskers!_ Sandra was Cat Woman, or Cheetah Girl, the model Micky had been romancing. Peter didn’t understand Micky’s two-tier view of women. He truly believed the leggy blondes who led him on a dance existed on a different plane to the real, usually brunette, women who actually danced with him. He really had a lesson to learn.

“You know the best thing to get over a broken heart?”

“Not broken heart; bruised ego,” Peter muttered.

“A hot, spicy curry.” Davy ignored him. “If we were in England, we could go to a tandoori house in the East End and have something _really_ scorching.”

“Well, best I can offer is grilled cheese sandwiches.” Mike took out the loaf. “But, with pepper sauce.”

“Your special hot one from home?” Micky perked up. “And you’ll let me put my own on?”

“Yep. You can even handle the bottle yourself.” Mike opened the cupboard to reveal the homemade fiery Texas jalapeno condiment in its wooden box with the DO NOT TOUCH; THIS MEANS YOU; YEAH YOU, BUDDY stickers on it. Micky sprang to take it down, in both hands, like a prize.

“Then you need something really cold for dessert, like _kulfi_.” Davy was still tripping down Memory Lane.

Peter frowned. “Are you sure that’s a remedy for getting over heartbreak?”

“Oh yeah, no. It’s for getting over a cold. My mistake.” Davy grinned at Micky stroking the small bottle and crooning, “ _My precious!_ ” “Look, you liked her better when she was dressed as a cat, anyway. Like when you met her?” he reminded Micky. “I bet she sensed that.”

“And his jungle-cat fetish in general,” Peter murmured.

“And she liked _you_ better when you were doing your Elvis impression,” Davy continued.

“Thankyouverymuch,” Micky replied.

“And how about you go turn your suffering and pain into art?” Mike indicated the meeting/study table and its papers and pens. “Write them into a song?”

Micky scoffed. “It’s hardly the same as Magdalena.”

“It’s all coal into diamonds.”

Peter wondered why Mike flinched at Davy’s statement. _Diamonds?_ For someone so guarded, Mike had a lot of tells.

“I’m gonna shower then cook,” Mike announced. He lowered his voice. “Pete, about just now…”

“Oh?” Peter closed the gap between them. Mike was closed-off, by nature, but learning—

“Yeah. ’M’sorry. I’m grouchy when I wake up—if you’re not in bed with me.”

“Oh.” It was a start, Peter supposed.

Mike frowned. “You…good, babe?”

“I’m…torn between ‘you tell me’ and ‘very much so’,” Peter admitted, loving the smile this put on Mike’s face and the way he leaned closer still. “And good morning.  And thanks.”

Mike blinked. “For your present? You already—”

“Not for that. For the…efforts you went to.”

“Dinner?”

“That too.”

Peter smirked at the emotions chasing one another across Mike’s face. “So, thanks. And now I’m going to lie in the shallows. In the salt water.”

“You…” Questions crossed Mike’s face this time, but Peter had told him more than once not to coddle him. Any of them. “Want company, or wanna go alone?” he asked.

“Alone. And I’ll take the binoculars and you hoist the flag when lunch’s ready.”

“Yeah? And I’m your cook and butler because… Because I am,” Mike finished, grinning, risking cries of, “My innocence!” and “My eyes!” in giving Peter a tiny kiss when they weren’t alone, and charges of corrupting minors in swatting at Peter as he went to change and head for the water. Peter caught him sneaking another glance at the rodeo poster, and betted it would be nowhere to be seen when he got back.

He didn’t want to think that Mike was being secretive, deceptive, even. It had almost split them up before. But that catch in his voice, and that look in his eye—

“Aghhh!” Peter clutched his chest. The thing rising from the shallows, green-black all over and trailing seaweed, had given him a medium Monkee scare. He wanted to run yet felt rooted to the wet sand draining from under his feet.

“Peter!” called the thing, bits falling from it when it waved, like a mummy rising if not from the crypt, then from the depths. Some Pacific Ocean variant, perhaps. Its cut-glass accent belatedly registered.

“ _Amanda?_ ” He was still doubtful it was her even when she removed her dark glasses. “Another bank holiday?”

“No, I’m working, you ’nana!” Her slap to his arm left a discoloured splat on him. “This is my latest _A Lady, A Broad_ column, about being a transplant here? This one’s called _Life’s a Beach_.” She indicated the dripping seaweed and the stinking mud covering most of her body, then the photographer and his assistant. Peter supposed the women with all the stuff were the beauty therapists whose all-natural products had turned Amanda into a swamp monster, and that the smooth, bland guys in the waves behind her were background models.

“It’s the US equivalent to my _Lady of the Night_ column back in London…” She regarded Peter, her gaze searching his face and his body. “Hey, chaps? Let’s everyone have a fag break?”

“Erm…”

“Smoke break! Sorry. Five minutes? Peter, sit down. Carefully…”

He folded his arms. “You assume—”

“About anyone walking as bow-legged as that and with _that_ look, yeah.” She helped him sit, then lie back in the salt water. “That ‘I met someone with a huge prick _and_ who knows what to do with it look’,” she added. “ _Yes?_ Oh, you jammy sod!”

Her squeals and exclamations washed over him like the wavelets and foam.

“He treat you right after too? Give you a present for giving it up? Jewelery for choice? Was that a _nod_? My _God_ , Peter! And he’s good-looking and fun too. And he snogs like a _demon_.” She wiped her eyes, smearing the green goo on her face. “Sweetie, you hold on to him with both hands and all ten fingernails. You do whatever it takes, okay?”

He glimpsed what Mike had meant about this woman. “Like…”

“Salon appointment at least once a week, twice for preference, to keep that mane shiny and sleek. Manicure and pedicure ditto. New clothes and lingerie and…oh, who am I kidding? Your hair’s the most sexy shade and texture, and your nails are stronger and nicer-shaped than mine have ever been.” She sat back, her pout working double-time.

“Thanks,” Peter said, meaning it.

“Well, you need to go shopping for, I don’t know, sexy undies? Proactive pajamas? If so, I’m your gal. Pal. But oh. Just one question. How b—”

“ _Amanda._ ”

“I know it’s already big on the slack, but in the act? I’m thinking—”

His hand to her forehead pushed her under the eddies of water.

“ _Nice!_ ” came a call, and the photographer started clicking away. Amanda came up spluttering and laughing, spitting seaweed from her mouth.

“Oh, you owe me!” she cried. “And I always collect. In fact, Friday…”

Peter turned out to be glad he’d bumped into her. The favor she needed solved a problem of his, too. He still had a mystery to solve, though, something to worry away at in his spare time. Not that there was much of that—the week underway reached its usual 33 and a third played at 45 speed right away. Today meant their rehearsal and gig…and hanging out with the Warm Embrace, who played after them, starting their week’s delayed residency. Mike, especially, loved it, and the exposure it gave them.

And then there was the nightly sex, richer and more varied now, with Peter loving taking Mike’s dick, as Mike had said he would, and eager to try all the positions that massaged the magical bump inside him. Nightly _and_ daily sex, if Peter managed to tempt Mike. A catlike smile took over his face at the memory of how his almost naked yoga two mornings ago had ended with the sundeck being christened, for want of a better word, in downward doggy-style. They’d have to try standing forward bend, next. And yesterday morning, him crawling around the bandstand…

“Michael, could you help me?” he’d called over from behind the drumkit.

“Sure. What you looking for there?”

“A quick fuck.” Peter’s deceptively sweet answer had had Mike racing across the room, choking in protest, swiveling his head between the other two working in the garage and Peter, on all fours, forehead to the floor, ass raised… Peter had won, coming without even a hand on his cock, the way Mike had powered into him.

But now it was Friday evening, and Mike following up with a club owner who’d liked what he’d seen of them at the Box, and Peter squashing down any feeling of betrayal as he, Micky and Davy reached Toby’s.

“Come in!” squealed Amanda. “Oh. Just hats?” She pouted at their suits and Stetsons. “Not a rhinestone amongst them,” she lamented to Toby and Soozie, a local girl Peter recognized from the beach, and someone introduced as ‘Selena from work’. “When I’m gloriously camp!” Amanda shook the leather fringes on her sleeves and hems and stamped in her white boots.

“Your…column?” Peter asked.

“Yup. _Hot in the Saddle_ ,” came promptly. Peter handed her into the limo, Micky and Davy confused as to who was with whom, there being an extra chick.

“Are you stiff?” Amanda queried, watching him seat himself.

In the silence that fell, Toby tried to explain that the English were more upfront about things…

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter instructed her. Them. They were soon in the University Park area, then right at Exposition Park, at the monolithic sports arena he associated more with conventions or athletics than rodeo.

“What— Oh, protestors!” Amanda peered out of the window as they nosed their way through the line of chanting, placard-bearing demonstrators. “Animal rights, it says.”

‘“Your ticket funds cruelty,’” read Toby, getting out of the car. “Really?”

“Pete?” Micky pointed at the activists. “Aren’t those—”

“Let’s find our seats,” he interrupted.

“VIP box,” Amanda corrected, smiling at the uniformed attendant who greeted them and led them through the quickly filling arena. “Courtesy of the magazine.”

The long box held eight, and was well-located: perfect to see and be seen. As the others seated themselves and took in the sights, Peter unravelled the wide white banner from around his waist and thumb-tacked it to the outside of the box.

‘“ANIMAL ABUSE PRESENTED AS FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT.’” Davy swallowed. “Peter…”

“I said he was stiff!” Amanda crowed, watching Peter unpeel a thin board from the inside back of his jacket and slip a long wooden pole out from his pant leg to fix it to.

‘“RODEO IS A BLOODSPORT’. Really?”’ Micky asked.

“Think we’re about to find out.” Davy indicated the trio of attendants and officials heading to them.

Asked to take down his signs, Peter invoked his constitutional right to free speech. Asked to leave, he showed his ticket. Threatened with arrest for causing an affray, he eventually agreed to exit. The whole scene attracted immense attention, including that of a handful of reporters who followed him out to the other protestors. Peter was glad about that: the group, barely breaking their chant of, “No excuse for animal abuse,” to cheer and applaud him, were being hassled by what looked like fans and participants as well as police. Press attention would be useful.

Within minutes, the scene had escalated, the pro-rodeo people charging at the antis, the cops charging at both parties, everyone scattering. In the melee, Peter got separated from most of the rest and found himself wandering in the space next to the arena that held the participants’ trucks and horseboxes. Dusk had fallen, lengthening shadows and intensifying pools of dark, making it difficult to pick his way through. A little lost, he saw a figure up ahead…one whose height and silhouette he would have recognized anywhere, and which now got him mad.

 _Michael’s here? If the others called him to come check up on me, I’ll—_ He flinched at a ferocious barking, the only warning before a huge black and brown dog hurtled past the caravan Peter crouched behind, to launch itself at the intruder. _Michael!_ Peter dropped his placard to hurl himself forward, to where the guard dog had Mike pinned to the ground and was going for his throat.

“Dutch, quit it!” Mike dodged the dog’s licks at his face. He hugged the yipping, squirming German shepherd and buried his face in its fur. “Oh, missed you, boy!”

“More’n me?” came in a deep, southern drawl from the tall figure leaning folded-armed against a van, a figure who pushed himself upright and took a slow, deliberate walk forward.


	6. Chapter Six

A finger-click had the dog sitting to attention, and both Mike and Peter gazed at the tall stranger now standing over Mike. He slid off his wide-brimmed, tall-crowned hat, raked back his tousled dirty-blond hair and replaced his hat. “ _Robin,_ ” Peter thought he heard the stranger say.

“ _Chase._ ” Michael’s tone held so many notes Peter couldn’t separate them.

The man reached down and pulled Mike up, and the two stood, staring at each other. The guy stood a little shorter than Mike, although he was long-limbed and wiry too, and perhaps as broad-shouldered as Peter, who crouched, confused, in the shadows between two vans, wondering why neither Mike nor the other guy were saying anything. What the hell was this?

The dog decided matters for Peter, jumping to its feet and sniffing its way to where he hid. It stopped and woofed.

“Someone back there?” called the man. The dog gave a bark. “Show yourself. I ain’t armed.”

“I doubt that,” came Mike’s voice.

“Okay, _barely_ armed,” the guy amended.

The dog whined a little and edged forward, touching its nose to Peter’s ankle. Peter flinched, knocking into the side of the van.

“Don’t be scared of the hound none,” called cowboy-guy.

“I’m not scared.” Peter atishoed the sneeze he’d been holding in. “I’m allergic.”

“ _Peter?_ ” Mike exclaimed. “What in the world…?”

Peter inched his way out and sneezed again, twice, grabbing the van to steady himself against the force. “I’ll be okay in a minute,” he said. “May I sniff your dog’s fur? I’ve worked out what amounts to a really accelerated desensitization protocol, based on in vivo exposure therapy. That’s from behaviourism, of course, but it works for allergens if…” He trailed off at the look on the others’ faces, including the dog’s.

“California, here I am,” observed the cowboy. “Don’t follow none of that, but you said you wanna pet the dog? Sure. Dutch, _friend_.”

The dog, Dutch, stood still, his tail wagging as Peter bent to him and took deep sniffs. Peter’s eyes streamed, his nose and lips swelled and he sneezed until his teeth rattled, but in a minute it was over. He straightened and mopped up with his handkerchief, his hat falling off to settle on the back of his neck, secured by its strap. He felt a complete fool as the other three regarded him.

The dog gave him a final searching sniff, then returned to Mike and subjected him to the same scenting, as if checking something. He yipped, then sat between them, looking at his master, who cocked his head back at him, receiving the message his dog communicated.

“Peter,” Mike said at last. “What were you doing?”

Peter retrieved the SAY NO TO RODEO sign he’d ended up with in the fracas. ‘“Gee, Officer Krupke,”’ he quoted, for some reason. “We got 'rounded up' by the cops and I ended up here, in a different form of corralled.”

“ _Jesus_ , Pete!” Mike stepped to him. “You get baton charged?”

“Billyclubbed? No. I ran too fast.” Although he’d gotten some bruises, he thought, in the scrum.

The guy laughed. “Seeing as how this ’un’s gone northern and forgot his manners, guess I gotta introduce myself. Chase.”

“Peter.” Peter shook the hand the nut-brown-eyed guy held out. His grip was crushing, but Peter was stronger than he might look, from playing instruments and sports. “ _Chase?_ ” he queried.

Cowboy-Chase shrugged. “Charles Eastman. Written Chas. E, on the chalkboard, so I got called Chase. It stuck, not like Rob. N.”

 _Robin!_ “He goes by Mike, yes,” Peter agreed.

“This is Peter,” Mike cut in, better late than never. “My roommate. Band mate too. He plays bass, guitar, keyboards and banjo, and writes songs, in our group.”

 _And I eat up all my greens_ , Peter had his mouth open to say when Mike added, “Pete’s my partner.”

Peter’s mouth hung open, but now at Mike’s acknowledging his role, his status, him defining what they were to each other—for the first time. He fought the resentment washing over him at this, at something so precious being thrown out casually in public when it should have been discussed and bilaterally agreed on in private. _Wait: not exactly in public—in front of a third party._ Because of _a third party._ But…Chase already knew: his dog had told him. And Michael knew that Chase must already know, even though Chase wasn’t saying he already knew. And would Michael have said anything if the dog hadn’t— Peter’s head hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the ruckus of earlier.

“Well, damn. This calls for a drink. If you’re old enough, of course.” Chase clapped Peter on the shoulder. “Can’t risk breaking the law now, can we?”

“He’s legal.”

And there was no time to even begin deconstructing that exchange, except to understand it had the hairs on the back of Peter’s neck standing up.

“So c’mon. Chuck wagon’s open.”

“When isn’t it?” Mike muttered.

“I could do with a drink.” Peter grabbed his SAY NO TO RODEO sign and held it high. “Can’t forget this.”

With a slow shake of his head, the cowboy ushered Peter and Mike through the vans and horseboxes and around the occasional person, all of whom stared. “Well, they warned me California weren’t the same as Texas. So how does that even work? You don’t eat meat? Or wear leather? I’m asking outta ignorance.”

“I’d be happy to rap with you about it,” Peter answered.

“To wut?”

“To talk.” Peter cursed—he couldn’t have sounded more cliched-Cali if he tried. He stepped over a taut rope, glad he hadn’t tripped. “But I’m more interested in how you two know each other. You were at school together?” He imagined Michael as a little kid, forming a local gang and—

“Yeah. High school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I got me some edumacation.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Ain’t nothing. Hey, Rosa.” Chase halted at the long metal truck and nodded at the woman half-leaning out of its open hatch. “Cold drink, Pete?”

Peter, knowing from Mike that meant soda, shook his head. “As the man said, I’m legal. Just not stone legal,” he finished in a mutter, wanting Mike to at least smile, to ease the tension he was radiating. On the surface, Chase was being hospitable, friendly even, but that wariness? Touchiness? It reminded Peter of, _well_ , Mike.

“Three long ’uns, three smalls, and a round,” Chase ordered from Rosa.

It turned out to be three beers, three whiskies, and a dish of water for Dutch. An upturned barrel served as a table, with upended boxes and a bucket for seats and Peter stuck his sign hard into the ground, attracting muttering and glares from people near or passing. Chase removed his hat and hung it off his knee. Mike examined it, seemingly its creases. Peter glared. If Mike tried it on…

“To…old friends?” Chase’s gaze snagged on Mike’s for just a second too long as he held out his beer.

“To…new cities.” Peter clinked his bottle into theirs, berating himself. Forget the rodeo protest sign—he practically had his own surtitles: JEALOUS AND INSECURE. “But I’m curious about your old city,” he added. “Tell me about high school?”

“Big building, classrooms, teachers, chalk…” Chase’s words came by way of guarded, dipped in droll and served up deadpan, reminding Peter again of early Mike.

“In Houston, right?”

“Dallas,” Chase corrected.

“My mom moved us there, and Chase’s mom moved them there too,” Mike cut in before Peter could ask more. “It wasn’t the nicest of neighborhoods…”

Chase’s nod loosened an unruly lock of his mid-length dark-blond hair. “Ma hated she’d come down in the world.”

“Oh, was she…divorced?”

“That’s a polite view of it.” Chase saluted him with the bottle. “So, high school…”

Peter tangled his fingers with Mike’s when they both scratched Dutch’s neck. He tried not to lean against Mike, listening to Chase explain how the weird zoning of school districts meant kids from their area attended a ritzy school and that Chase, hating it, escaped every Friday back to his dad’s ranch in Mallory, south east of Dallas, and, when he got to know Mike, took him too.

“Really?”

“Yeah! Where d’you think he learnt to rope?”

“I…the air force?” Peter replied, nonplussed. He stroked his foot against Mike’s and a second later Mike gave him an answering squeeze. “That was kind of your family.”

“Oh, they didn’t notice. Well, if they did, I guess they thought Mike just was another…well, apart from his darker hair, that he was one of us, I guess.”

“Charlie gave up competing, right?” Mike asked in the silence.

“Yeah. Stock contractor mainly now; moved from steers and calves to rough stock, broncs and bulls,” Chase explained. “You heard of Goldie Locks. Prize bull? Pa’s last ride? We got him.”

“You ride bulls?” Peter’s confused mind went to matadors, toreadors…

“Me? Nah. Too pussy for roughstock events. I’m a roper. Tie-down roping. Never did find anyone else for team roping.” Chase flicked a glance at Mike, one Mike avoided. Chase finished his beer and knocked back his short. “Hey, wanna go see April?”

“What do you think? She still a beauty?” Mike replied.

“What do you think?” Chase countered, grabbing his hat and standing.

Peter downed his whisky and tried to brush his rumpled suit clean before meeting—

“His horse.” Mike, reading Peter, gave his first smile in an age.

“Quarter horse.” Chase nodded at a huge burly guy they crossed paths with.

Quarter…did that mean Chase had a one-fourth ownership, or something? “Shouldn’t you be in the arena, then?” Peter wondered.

“For this gala? Nah. No competition tonight, just parades to introduce the stars, demonstrate the events for you foreigners.”

 _Oh yes._ Amanda had planned to get in on the action, trying out barrel rolling, or bull running or something. Peter just hoped Micky—

“Here she is.” Chase had led them to the first of a short row of shelters—or stalls, Peter supposed. He couldn’t really appreciate the finer points of the horse, because as soon as Chase had switched on the light over the door, Peter realized…how alike he and Chase looked. About the same height, similar build, both sandy-blonds, both brown-eyed. _Similar build as we’re both athletic._ That he was wondering if Chase played an instrument blindsided Peter.

“I heard you left the forces and went to college.”

He’d missed something, but caught up.

“Then heard you left college and came out here.” Chase clicked at his horse to get her to settle. “You got to the beach, huh?”

“Yeah. I… Beech _wood_ , actually. North Beechwood.” Mike’s joke fell flat. “But yeah. I’m…here now. And you…stayed.”

“And I stayed. I’m…happy for you.”

Oh, the awkwardness—no, the painfulness in seeing two guys who wanted to hug, but instead slapped each other’s upper arms. Chase’s goodbye handshake seemed to bruise less and Peter followed Mike to the parking lot in silence, letting Mike settle his thoughts, although his swirled and beat at him. At the Monkeemobile, Mike halted.

“I… You wanna go somewhere?”

Peter nodded.

“Where?”

“Anywhere you want to take me.”

“Pete, you…”

He almost flinched when Mike crowded him close, pushing him against the car. Just a brief contact, long enough for Mike to press into him and whisper, “ _…are a miracle._ ”

Peter worked out where _anywhere_ was when they turned north onto Vermont, still in silence. They’d soon climbed to and skirted the Observatory’s park to park high to the west of it.

“Hiking?” Peter queried. It was okay for Mike, in the jeans and plaid shirt which had fitted in so well back at the rodeo…

“It’s a short walk.”

“To…” Although he could work it out.

“Doowylloh.”

And he worked that out too, even before a short climb brought them out on the ridge behind the big sign, backwards in front of them. The vista, downtown and the ocean, was a guesswork, or a patchwork, of lights, in the dark. He waited for Mike to speak.

“I came here…” Mike gestured out in front of him.

“When you came here.” Peter’s gesture was a circle, indicating the town, the city, the state.

Mike nodded. “I know you got questions. Want the fill-in. You always have.”

True, he’d always been curious about Mike’s journey to where he was, in a different way than he was about Davy’s or Micky’s or even his own. He draped his jacket around Mike’s shoulders. Mike, eyes fixed on the bubble lights of the view, barely noticed.

“My mom remarried, and I didn’t really like having a stepdad.” Mike shrugged. “You told me once—you were reading something—about monkeys? About when a new male takes over, he kills any existing children before he makes his own family?”

“ _Michael—_ ” Peter gulped.

“God, no! He wasn’t like that at all. Not like Chase’s…” Mike turned away a little. “I’m just trying to make a point about…evolution, I guess. Or growth. I was too old to be at home, even though it’d always been okay. Not like Chase’s. His mom was very bitter when his dad kicked her out. They weren’t married.” He glanced at Peter. “You worked that out. He moved on to a younger buckle bunny.”

“Okay, what?”

Mike huffed out a laugh. “Rodeo groupie.”

“Oh.”

“I know you think all that cowboy stuff’s awful and harmful and—”

“All I’m thinking now is I’m glad you had somewhere you liked being, had folk you liked being with.” He stepped nearer until there was no space between them. Peter thought about Chase—and Mike—spending weekends at his father’s. “Chase must have felt torn. Disloyal.”

“Guilt. I did. At leaving town, leaving Mom, after all she’d done…”

 _And this blast from his past has brought it all back._ A little guilt-ridden that Mike was dredging it up, Peter slung an arm over him, turning him.

“You think I’m secretive.”

“Guarded,” Peter corrected Mike. He _knew_ Mike was, just as he knew there was more to this story. More to Mike and Chase’s story. Looked like now wasn’t the time though.

Mike laughed. “Yeah. Well. Just, I don’t like reminders of stuff from back then. Bad enough when it was happening. Bleh.”

“You didn’t like high school at all?”

“Nah. Well, I liked the auditorium. There and the one in college. I used to sit on the stage and imagine what the room’d be like full, with me playing to the audience.”

“Michael…” Peter stroked down his cheek, pouring all his love and caring into the touch. “You still do that! Only, it’s in clubs now, and there’s no need to imagine the audience.”

“Yeah.” Mike cleared his throat: his voice had gone husky. “I found my place.” He wound his arms around Peter’s waist and hugged him close. _Snuggled_ him close, only stopping when Peter pulled away.

“Michael, sorry, but I really need to piss.”

“ _Babe!_ ” Mike protested.

“I _said_ sorry!” Peter was already turning away. “You know I don’t usually drink beer and…”

“Don’t think I’m gonna forget you ruining the mood!” Mike was still snorting with laughter when they drove home.

“I can get you in the mood again,” Peter assured him.

“Yeah, you…” Mike spotted the truck in the paved space in front of their garage in time. He turned a puzzled face to Peter before getting out of the Pontiac.

Mike might have spotted the truck first, but Peter was pretty sure he was the first to see their visitor—mainly because he hadn’t thought for one minute that this evening had been the end of it. Mike froze at the figure waiting on their doorstep.

“ _Chase?_


	7. Chapter Seven

“Howdy there. You forgot something. Or I did. Me banging on about Southern manners and hospitality, and I let you leave empty-handed?” He threw down his cigarette and crushed it under the toe of his boot, then tossed a brown paper bag to Mike.

The easy way Mike caught it spiked Peter’s jealousy, and the chuckle Mike gave on feeling the contents punched him in the gut.

“Well, thanks. How much do I owe you?”

Chase scoffed.

 _Drugs_ , came Peter’s stupid thought. _Some rodeo circuit network and…what comes from Texas?_ “How did you find us?” came his even more stupid question.

Chase jerked his chin at his truck. “Dutch can track, easy as breathin’.”

 _Oh, obviously. He’d just need the street, which Mike mentioned…_ Peter waited a few seconds, but Chase showed no sign of wanting to leave now he’d finished his self-appointed errand, and Mike didn’t look as though he’d be taking point on this one. “Do come in. Come on in.” Peter amended his invite, aiming for _friendly_.

“Sorry to…” Chase did the remove hat, rake hair, replace hat bit again. “Just earlier, seeing you, well, I’d kinda like to talk about some stuff. If that’s okay?” This last was addressed to Peter, disarming him at the same time as the first part alarmed him.

“Talk over old times?” Peter prepared to stand his ground.

“Peter—”

“No,” Chase spoke at the same time as Mike. “Nothing like that. I, well, I got new stuff I need to make sense of. On the spread. The ranch,” he clarified, probably seeing Peter’s bewilderment. “Hey, look, scratch it. This was a bad idea. I’ll—”

“No, it’s fine. Mike?” Peter prompted. _How do you want to handle this?_ Mike remained motionless. “Well, I need to run to the late store so—”

“Can we go on the beach?” Chase asked. “It’s safe, right?”

“The…water? Sure.” Peter frowned. “You want to come in and get a towel?”

Chase laughed. “Sure. I can’t swim worth a damn, but Dutch’ll like it.” He whistled.

“I didn’t mean…” God, Peter was tired. Tired of being confused too. The two of them still stood there, so Peter let himself in, grabbed two beach towels from the closet and went back out to hand them over, making his meaning as plain as he could.

“Peter…” Mike stroked his wrist, taking the towel. “I’ll see you in a few.” He seemed as bemused as Peter.

“Sure. Take your time.” _Not insecure. Not thinking my ‘partner’ is shortly going to be stripping off, probably, in front of a guy who’s his ex, probably, and who’s going to be baring all in front of him, probably, and…_ He stopped himself. No. Chase seemed to want to bare his soul. Mike was trustworthy. _Well…_ Honest. _Well…_ Honorable. When no opposition to that sprang up, Peter went to make tea, taking deep breaths while the water heated.

He made himself reason it through. One. Mike had been stirred up by meeting someone from his past, and he’d had Peter to talk to. Two. So if Chase was on edge or whatever too by thoughts of the past, who did he have? Only Mike, maybe. _There. All squared away._ So he wouldn’t attempt to look through the telescope and certainly wouldn’t throw on dark clothes and creep out, sticking to the rocks as much as he could, to— He’d never been so glad to hear Micky’s and Davy’s voices as they approached the pad. Funny—he’d never thought of them as his saviours before.

“Pete?” Micky stuck his head in and saw him. “There’s a really neat truck out here with Texas plates on it and dog stuff in it!”

“Oh. That’ll be for the Texas dog.” Peter went out and whistled.

“Peter…” Micky gave Davy a _look at what Peter’s doing_ look.

“Just wait. And, Mick, should I ask why your arm’s in a sling and there’s a bandage around your head?”

“Yeah, Tutankhamun, tell Peter about your attempt at r— _arrghomp_!” came Davy’s reaction to a streak of brown and black fur racing around the side of the pad and launching itself on them, to pin them to the ground. It stood over them, a paw on each, looking at Peter for more instructions.

“What did you say to him?” wailed Micky.

“Dutch, _friend_ ,” said Peter, in as near an imitation of Chase as he could. Whatever—it worked. Dutch sat, his tail wagging.

“You sounded like Mike!” Micky exclaimed still from the ground, now hugging Dutch. “Wait. This truck…this dog…not Mike’s?”

“How could they be, you berk?” Davy scorned.

“You mean…he’s got a double?” Micky scrabbled away, coming to sit against the wall of the pad, hunched into himself, his good arm around the German shepherd now licking his face. “But, but like a long-lost twin, right? Not like an evil lookalike who—”

“Micky!” Peter tried for normality, pulling Micky to his feet. “More the former. Not the latter. It’s complicated.”

“I’ll need a cuppa in that case.”

Must be nice for Davy, Peter so often thought, to be from a place that had such a readily available cure-all, where the phase he was about to utter was a response to so many exclamations or the answer to a whole range of problems: “The kettle just boiled.”

“But—”

“Were you okay, Mr. Visible Face of the Protest?” Davy cut Micky off, asking Peter. “The reporters that didn’t follow you out were all over us instead!”

Peter described the confrontation outside the arena, stopping after the bumping-into-Mike part. “What about you?” he asked, before anyone could follow-up on that.

“Oh, the officials shooed the journalists away from us VIPS; Micky made an arse of himself when they asked for volunteers, and I got offered a starring role—I’m televisual.” Davy preened.

“Hope you got the dinner they mentioned. Hey, where’re the girls?”

“We did. Yeah, Toby and Amanda and whatshername stayed on after. Press stuff. Magazine stuff.” Davy dumped a load of papers and photos, Press Packs, on the table and pulled off his tie. “But Soozie came back with us—she’s getting changed and we’re going down to the beach.”

The dog paused and pricked up its ears. Seemed he’d learned a new word.

“You’ll meet his owner, then.”

“Texas truck-and-dog-man?” Davy took a sip of tea and watched the human vs. canine obstacle racing around and across the den, mainly Dutch waiting for Micky to catch up.

“Old friend of Mike’s.”

“Old friend as in…”

“I don’t know.” It was the truth. There was something there, though.

“Huh. Funny, I just assumed Mike had been…or rather, _hadn’t_ been, before you.”

Peter couldn’t help but feel flattered.

“So he’s always been into pole _and_ pussy. Huh.”

“Ya gotta stop reading those magazines of _Micky’s_ , man!” Peter yelped, in his best Mike, cracking them both up. Dutch popped his head up over the second-floor balcony, and Micky did the same a second later, his expression identical, right down to the lolling tongue, making them guffaw louder.

Soozie came in and took a step back at the chaos. Davy went to take her hand to lead her to the sundeck.

“No, I’m not going down there.” Peter answered Davy’s question before he asked it.

“He wouldn’t mess you about.” Davy looked back over his shoulder, heading for the side door. He whistled and the dog bounded up. “I wasn’t calling you, but you know, you’re better trained and better company? Come on.” He paused. “Peter, you want answers, you ask Mike straight. Yeah?”

“Davy…”

“Or I will. So, swear?”

Peter had no choice but to nod. He shut the sundeck door in their wake and tried not to analyse how Chase had looked when saying he had things to talk through. It was too layered to dissect, anyway. He picked up a book to take his mind off it, then, hating himself for dwelling on it or feeling he had to get up to speed, read through the material Davy had brought back.

The bumf described the different US circuits of the Pro Rodeo Organization, how riders nominated a home circuit but could compete in others. Oh, Peter understood Davy’s televisual remark: LA was offering a big purse to attract riders to this event, and making a huge production of it, hoping to host the nationwide finals in December. In addition, a major TV network wanted to generate interest in a weekly televised bull-riding show. Sponsors were lined up and certain bulls were already personalities, their fame spreading outside their circuits, with one to be chosen as the show’s mascot. Damn—were Micky’s injuries from bull-riding? _Seems the sort of…_ _Ah._ Peter read on and rolled his eyes. _Rodeo clown._ Peter would bet money on it.

He went to bed, mainly to avoid having to see Chase’s return. Despite having music playing in the bedroom, he heard the truck leaving, and minutes later, Mike came up. Peter took a deep cleansing breath and started, determined things wouldn’t fester.

“I’m going to get everything out,” he began, before Mike even closed the door.

“Sounds good to me.” Mike eyed him, mainly his boxer shorts, his only item of clothing.

“I’m serious.” Peter firmed his lips. “I’m going to ask you things and I want you to reply one hundred percent truthfully and I will one hundred percent believe you.”

“Woah there, shotgun. Want me to go get the Bible to swear on?”

“I _said_ I’m serious, Michael!”

Mike blinked. “I beg your pardon.” He sat and took Peter’s hand.

“Accepted. So.” Peter exhaled. “Is Chase your ex?”

“No.”

 _Oh. Well, okay then._ “Fine. I understand he needed to talk. Was it about old times? He said it wasn’t but–”

“No. He’s not a liar.”

“But he looked shifty.” Peter laced his fingers with Mike’s and used his free hand to stroke their joined knuckles.

“Well, sure, wanting to talk over his thoughts, like a teenage girl? I know, I know. Talking’s good and all that. But that’s how he sees it.”

“What thoughts?” Peter was actually curious.

“Confidential stuff.” Mike sighed under Peter’s glare. “Fine. About the ranch. It’s not doing so well. Cattle industry isn’t in general. All these dang vegetarians…” He brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of Peter’s.

“I…eat some meat.” Peter gave a meaningful glance at Mike’s crotch. “So Chase is trying to figure out how to adapt?”

“Well, his granpa’s all for the traditional ‘get more land by marrying the neighbor-girl' approach. His pa moved them into stock contracting—breeding and supplying steers and calves and then broncs and then bulls for the circuit. And Chase is taking business courses by correspondence and thinks a dude ranch—guest ranch—is the way to go, with theirs specializing in teaching cowboy—rodeo—skills. So he wants to win big this year, move up in the rankings, get recognition…” Mike snorted. “He went behind his pa’s back to put that idea to his granpa, who told him sure, so he’d best get to marryin’ a neighbour girl to cook and housekeep for the guests!”

Peter fought a grin. “One last question. Did he come to LA deliberately to see you? What? Why—”

“ _He_ asked _me_ if I went to the rodeo on purpose to see him!” Mike managed through his chortles.

“And…you didn’t. So why were you there?”

“Oh, no reason, just…”

Peter sat up straight against the headboard.

“I’d rather not say, babe.”

“Not an option.” Peter recalled the bag Chase had brought for Mike. “I want to know. Now.”

“You’re way pushier than I ever believed possible!” Mike yelped. “Fine!” He stood, sighing. “One minute.” He was back in less than that, the paper bag in his hands. He passed it over to Peter who withdrew a small, wide-mouthed glass jar, about four ounces, he thought, filled with some sort of— “Tomato preserve?”

“ _Tom—_ It’s homemade salsa dip!” Mike cried. “With jalapeños and cilantro, and lime and garlic, and the tomatoes roasted before being processed! This is Texas _caviar_ , man!”

Peter unscrewed the lid. “It smells nice.”

“ _Nice?_ _Nice?_ ” Mike’s face was almost as red as the contents of the jar.

“Jeez, forget the Alamo already,” Peter muttered. “And how do… Oh.” He discovered the tortilla chips in the bag. “Well, I didn’t get any dinner…”

Mike, grinning now, pulled a folded blanket free from the foot of their double bed and spread it on the floor. “Sir?”

Peter slid to sit, holding up a hand at Mike. “You know the rule. No shirts when eating salsa.”

“Oh.” Mike stripped down to his shorts in the blink of an eye. “That’s the rule? I never knew.”

“I only just made it.” Peter leaned over to kiss Mike, long and deep.

“Ah.” Mike nodded. “Your rules, is it.”

They’d discovered they tended to operate on a first start, first served and usually first come system. “Uh-huh.” Peter took first scoop of the dip. “Oh, wow, this is good.” He held the remains of the triangular chip between his lips and Mike caught on in a flash, closing his mouth over it to bite off most of it, crunching it and kissing Peter at the same time. He hardened in an instant, pressing into Peter.

He sat back and regarded Peter, head tilted. “It’s the beer, right?”

Peter understood. “And the whisky. I don’t usually drink, and I’ve had no food.”

“So eat. Blot it up. But hey, respect the salsa, man!”

Peter took another tortilla chip to eat more, then used his fingers instead to take a more substantial helping, enjoying the tingle in his lips and tongue. With a fake, “Oops,” he dropped a small splat onto Mike’s chest, and let it run down to his navel before stopping its descent with his tongue tip and licking it back up the way it had come. “Umm. I can taste the chilies," he husked.

“Peter.” Mike sat back on his hands so Peter had room to work. “You’re one decadent cat. And why do I think this is leading— _ah!_ —up to— _ooh_ —some joke about tasting the tomatoes?”

Peter barely paused in nipping his way down to Mike’s groin and stripping his boxers from him to let his cock, ready and waiting, spring free. “Because you know me?”

“ _Shit!_ ” Mike yelped a second later as Peter got a hand and his mouth to his erect, straining dick. “I can _feel_ the chilies, babe!” He moaned more as Peter, who’d wondered if his mouth and hand would carry traces of jalapeño and capsicum, spluttered with laughter around Mike’s cock, which he refused to relinquish. If anything, he worked and sucked Mike harder.

“Oh, I got us a job!”

Peter giggled more at the word association, that what he was doing to Mike had prompted this thought. He slowed, reducing his efforts to a slight lick of Mike’s slit, arrowing his tongue tip to do so.

“No, don’tstop…tellyou after,” Mike groaned.

Peter flattened his tongue to swirl it over the head of Mike’s cock, making sure to leave lots of saliva. He knew that drove Mike crazy.

“L’ter,” Mike amended.

Peter pushed him flat, took him deep and cradled his balls.

“T’mor’w,” Mike promised.

* * * *

Only he didn’t get the chance: Peter wasn’t in the bed when Mike woke the next morning. That wasn’t so unusual and it was something that only made him grouchy until he’d gotten his good morning kiss and cuddle. No, what was unusual and out of whack was the series of staccato bangs on the front door, loud and heavy and shaking the pad. That? That made him uneasy. Another bout started up again before the echoes of the first round had died down, and Mike, cursing, hustled into shorts to go see.

Before he’d even reached the helter-skelter stairs, Peter was crossing from the sundeck. Too late to yell “ _No!_ ”, Mike could only watch as Peter opened the door to the two guys standing there, men whose hard faces screamed _cops_ and whose street clothes said _detective_ and who gave each other meaningful looks on seeing Peter.

They glanced from him to the newspaper one of them carried, folded back to show a picture. Not just any picture—Peter, yesterday evening, at the protest, his placard held high. Negative vibes swirled around the pad, thick with hostility, anger and threat. What the hell was going on? Or, more to the point, Mike thought, swallowing hard, _what the hell did Peter do?_

 

 


	8. Chapter Eight

“Mr. Peter Tho—Tor…” The older, stouter guy gave up at a mangled pronunciation of Peter’s surname and settled for glaring at him and tapping the newspaper he carried instead. “Detectives Miller and Estevez. LAPD Southwest Division. Can you confirm this is you?”

“Yes. Yesterday at the sports arena, as it says.”

 _Peter! No!_ Mike, scrambling into pants and shirt, willed him to stay silent. Whatever had gone on, was _going_ on, silence was probably a safer answer.

The other officer, younger, thinner, sporting more hair, got his foot over the threshold. “In that case, you’re coming with us. You’re wanted for questioning.”

“I disincline to acquiesce with your request.” Peter stood firm. “And questioning in regard to what?”

The cops exchanged glances. The older one nodded at the younger. “Go ahead, Estevez. You speak their language.”

“You don’t wanna come. I dig that. Hey, tell you what. Let’s trade. You give us your cardboard placard from yesterday and we’ll split, like we were never here. Dealio?” Estevez asked.

“That sign? SAY NO TO RODEO? From the picture?”

 _Peter, please—_ But whatever telepathy they shared was switched off. Mike rammed his feet into his shoes and yanked at the laces, his heart skipping beats.

“I…think I left it at the arena. Not the exhibition hall itself, but the lot next to it.”

“Oh, the compound, you mean?” asked the younger cop, his manner confiding and helpful.

“If that’s what it’s called, where all the caravans and trucks are? Look, what is all this?”

“ _This_ is a whole barrel of shit, kid.” The older guy smirked. “Where to start? Let’s see. Criminal trespass. Vandalism.”

 _Fuck whichever one of those idiots Peter hangs out with’s done this!_  Whatever _this_ was. Mike took an extra fifteen seconds to put on a tie, jerking it with swift savage motions, angry that the attention Peter had attracted at the protest was making him an easy target for whatever had gotten damaged when his group had fled. _Trash cans shoved over? Billboards dented?_

 “Officers.” He jumped down most of the stairs, Micky-style, and shoved himself beside Peter, making the two cops back off a little. “Lemme get this straight. There’s been some vandalism, you said, at the area next to the Memorial Sports Arena, and a poster Peter was holding at one point was found there, so you’re here to accuse him?” He poured polite scorn into his tone.

“Yes, it does seem circumstantial,” Peter agreed. “Oh, good morning.”

“And you are?” Miller sneered at Mike.

“One of his roommates. There are four of us.” _Strength in numbers…_ “So, this alleged vandalism?”

 “ _Criminal_ vandalism,” Miller corrected. “And that’s just the beginning.”

Property damage!” The other officer made a show of clicking his fingers. “We forgot to add that one.”

“ _Reckless and wilful_ destruction of property, Estevez. Not that the peaceniks see it as that. And interesting factoid,” Miller continued, “in California property crime, intentionally depriving someone of his or her property, usually comes under theft.”

“Going with that one, to start then?” his fellow officer questioned. “And the value of the property destroyed makes it grand theft, right?”

“I have no idea what—” Peter repeated.

 “SAY NO TO RODEO was just one of the peacenik slogans painted around the compound— you’re quite the graffiti artist of your little hippie group, aren’t you? You’re all about the goodwill to all men…you a CO? Conchie?” Miller demanded.

Peter hid a flinch. He wouldn’t be conscripted—Mike had seen to that—so there was no need to claim conscientious objector status, although it would have been true, in Pete’s case.

“And I bet you’re a vag…what it is?” Miller asked his partner.

“Vegetarian.”

“Right. So you wanted to stop more animals being bred for their meat and to be used in shows, yeah? That why you broke into a storage vehicle and trashed a whole case of bull semen ready and waiting for the buyers to collect, for their cows to make little calves? Must admit, this case has been an education. I had no idea how that stuff was collected, or stored, or what a damned fortune it’s worth!”

“And if you think about it, what you did was killing animals!” Estevez added.

“That’s—that’s crazy!” Peter backed away a little, and Mike knew he needed to remove himself from the cops’ negative energy. “I wouldn’t do anything like that! I was there simply exercising my right to protest, to free speech under the first amendment to the constitution.”

“And I think you’d better exercise the fifth now,” Mike muttered, nudging Peter’s bare toes with his foot. “Cool it, huh?”

“When am I supposed to have done all that damage and theft?” Peter ignored Mike.

“Between midnight and six a.m.” Miller smirked. “Oh, got an alibi?”

Peter gripped the doorframe tighter.  “I…I was here in Beechwood.”

Even to Mike he sounded cagey, as well he might. He could hardly say he’d been in bed with Mike, that Mike could attest— “Cool it, Pete. I think we’d better get a lawyer.”

“Why would you say that?” Estevez jumped right in. “What does he need a lawyer for?”

True, we need a miracle, Mike thought, and sent up a prayer, as best he could through the anger and frustration consuming him at not being able to protect Pete.

 “Okay, so we have motive, means and opportunity. So, you’ll be coming with us to— _Jesus!_ ”

Both cops scattered as the dark-green Jeep pulled up right outside, braking within inches of the door and them. “Oh, do excuse me!” came in ringing English tones. “I’m still getting used to everything being on the wrong side!”

And Amanda, dressed and made-up to the nines, cut the engine and jumped from the Jeep’s open side. “Oh, I say! What’s going on?” She looked around the tableau, her gaze landing on Mike.

He tried to signal to her, flicking his glance between Peter and the cops and her, and ended with his hands in prayer position, his eyes imploring. Giving the tiniest of nods in reply, she pushed forward.

“Sweetie, what’s going on?” she demanded, her voice bossy. “Darling?” She took Peter’s hand.

“I’ve been accused of, well, stealing semen,” Peter replied.

“What? _Whose? How? Why?_ ” Amanda shook herself. “No, the real question is when, isn’t it?” She raised an imperious eyebrow at the cops. “Because if it was any time last night until breakfast, that would be impossible.”

“Lady—”

“This is a republic, yes?” She cut Miller off. “Meaning you don’t use titles here?”

“You’re saying he has an alibi?” Estevez asked. “Ma’am?” he added.

“Amanda, no!” Peter seemed to catch on. Probably by the way she’d draped his arm around her waist and was nestled under his arm.

“Cool it,” Mike whispered, and that, the third time of saying it, was the charm. Peter fell silent as if under a spell. And if Mike discovered Micky had been experimenting with mind control again, he’d—

“ _Yes_ , sweetie.” Amanda patted his chest. “You have to answer when officers of the law ask questions. And if that means a reputation has to be tarnished for the truth to shine out, so be it.” Her smile was brave and she stepped into the middle of the detectives, toting Peter with her.  “Why don’t you put the kettle on, Mike? I’d _love_ a cuppa,” came over her shoulder.

Somehow, Mike found himself inside, the door closed in front of him. The kettle was boiling so he made a pot, using Davy’s loose-leaf tea, shaking his head at himself and wondering at the sense of humor of whoever was up there and had answered his prayer in that way. He raced into the downstairs bedroom to rush to its window. As he could have predicted, Davy was already there, peering out, and Micky still asleep.

“You hear anything? Crack open the window!” He nudged Davy aside to peep out at the cops’ car, where Amanda now sat on the hood, talking to the officers standing in front of her. “You caught all that?”

Davy nodded. “Peter didn’t do anything…did he?” He turned to grab a T-shirt.

Mike didn’t bother answering, although both Davy’s question and action annoyed him. He was too busy trying to see what was happening. Amanda seemed to be showing the cops some small, thin dark-blue book. Her dictionary? “Oh, God, I bet she only knows British words for sex. Shagging! Humpty-Dumpty! Down the rabbit hole!” he spat out.

“It’s ‘rumpy-pumpy’ and whatever that hole thing is, I’d really rather not know.” Davy eyed him and pulled his tee on.

The weight of it all hit Mike, anger and guilt adding to it. “How about you don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, huh?”

“And what makes you think I haven’t, huh?”

Silence followed Davy’s reply, broken only by Micky’s sleep giggles.

“Sorry,” Mike offered.

“Yeah, well, seems we both assumed about the ass of u and me.” Davy snorted at his own joke.

As lost for words as he’d accused Amanda of being, Mike put a slow arm around his band mate’s shoulders and pulled him close, needing the nearness and warmth. Davy looped an answering arm around Mike’s waist.

“It’ll be okay.” He squeezed Mike. “I’d back her against a whole station of coppers.”

“Yeah!” came from behind them, making them jump. Micky, sleep-talking, or rather, sleep-answering.

Mike spared him a glance where he lay spread out like a starfish, his hair crazy on the pillow, his naked body uncovered and his cock standing erect. Mike…sort of missed the sight. Missed sharing with him.

“Oi. I’ll tell Peter,” Davy warned him. Then he shrugged. “Probably mean he’ll come and gawp too, so you’re even, yeah? Look, she’s finished!”

At least, Amanda was kissing the cops on both cheeks, European-style, and pushing her tits into their chests as she did so.

Mike and Davy raced to the front door.

“Oh and don’t leave town, erm, your lady,” called Miller.

“Oh, but what about Vegas?” Amanda pouted. “Oh! You two could come with! Official witnesses! That’d be so chic. Yes, I’ll be in touch.” She waved them off and elbowed Peter inside, Mike frowning at Davy and Davy shaking his head at Mike.

The sight of them seemed to unfreeze Peter. “Amanda, you can’t—”

“Can and did. And if you go and say anything different to the coppers, I’ll be arrested and deported.” She raised a warning finger at Peter.

“M’lady.” Mike grabbed her into a big hug, then kissed the top of her head. He tried not to catch Peter’s eye, not wanting to see awareness of what had just transpired setting in, and even less to see Peter’s reaction to it. Mike couldn’t pretend there wouldn’t be a reckoning, for what he’d done. It just wouldn’t be here and now—Peter being too well-mannered to hold it in public. Mike hoped it was late enough that he could gather his strength for it.

He set her upright and straightened her dress. “You gotta go to the precinct and swear out a statement?”

“No. The British consul-general will pop around and take one. Tea ready? Did Davy make it?”

“What?”

“I owe them anyway—they had me over for dinner last week. Oh, unless you want to go to the Residence, in Hancock Park, and use the visit to ask about playing at a function? Good idea.” She poured herself a cup, then one for Davy.

Mike scratched his head. “Still what.”

She took a swallow of tea. “Don’t worry about it. Oh, actually do, because I came to ask a favor, and now you owe me! You see, I have a willy now…” Amanda nudged them back outside, and pointed to the Willys CJ-3B jeep she’d arrived in.”

Davy laughed. “You do, luv. Nice big one too.”

“On approval. So I have to make sure my willy’s in good health before I buy.”

Davy almost choked on his tea. “Always good to get your willy checked out.”

“I’m guessing willy means wang.” Mike shook his head at the Brits, but was glad of the comic relief. “Micky’s the best person to handle your willy for you.”

“I’ll start waking him.” Chuckling, Davy went in.

“Mike, Peter, you’re tall: does my willy look smaller from that angle?” Amanda doubled over, laughing.

“I can see a willy’s the gift that keeps on giving.” Peter rescued her cup from her and took a gulp of her tea.

“Peter.” She straightened. “You didn’t do it, did you.”

“No! Of course he—”

“So who did?” She cut through Mike’s spluttering. “Which of the group, the protestors?”

“No one!” Peter insisted. “We’re peaceful. Pacifists, even.”

“Well, someone did. Look, I learned yesterday that the city wants to attract interest in rodeo, hold the finals here, and a local network want to televise a weekly show. That’s _huge_ money in sponsors and audience. The police’ll need to arrest someone to appease the tourists and the businesses involved.”

“I swear—”

“Pete.” Mike rubbed his arm. “Start your phone tree and call a meeting. We’ll figure out who did this. Please. Go on.”

Peter still pinch-faced, went in.

“Oh, that was naïve of me!” Amanda grabbed Mike, her hazel eyes huge. “We’re supposing there’s a _this_ to figure out. What if there isn’t anything there at all? That it’s just made up, to quash dissent? Like Special Branch, in London? They have this new unit set up to infiltrate protest groups. Undercover officers cause trouble at rallies and speeches to arrest the leaders! Do they do that here?”

“I…don’t know.” It sounded crazy, but…

“Right. So I’ll go and take a look. Find out.” Amanda rummaged in her purse for something and Mike stopped her.

“You’re no cop, Manda.”

She shook him off and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “No, I’m a trained professional journalist with credentials for the site _and_ an established presence there. I can go get the gen.” She bent to use the wing mirror. “What, you think my be all and end all is thinking up new ways to describe the miniskirt and what to think about it? Pussy pelmet and mini-tastic, by the way.”

She capped her lipstick and threw it into her purse. “I’ll need wheels to get there quickly before they claim to have repaired any damage or painted over any slogans,” came in her wake as she checked out the garage. “May I borrow your bike? Don’t worry—I grew up riding Nortons and BSAs. I ride a Triumph-Bonneville in London. You won’t be lending it to Peter, because you should go with him. When he meets his group, asks if anyone did this? You should be there too.”

“Because he’s dumb?” Rage swelled in Mike again.

Amanda gave him a raised-eyebrow look. “Because he’s nice. Sweet. And this needs someone more…surly. Suspicious. And you know it.”

After a second, Mike unhooked the keys to his bike and tossed them to her. She shrugged into his leather jacket and tucked her purse into a saddlebag. “Ta. I’ll be back. And don’t call me Manda.”

“Amanda’s too long. Don’t you have a nickname?” He stood aside for her to wheel the bike out.

“I do, actually.” Her full lips turned up in a grin. “It’s Cee-Cee.”

“Cee-Cee? How in the world d’you get Cee-Cee from Amanda?”

“Oh, I’m sure you can work it out. It’s a very black-and-white process.”

“And if I do, do I get a prize?”

“Yes. I’ll autograph you a copy of my Pulitzer-Prize-winning article about this!” And the minx blew him a kiss as she sped away. Seeing how well she handled his bike cheered him up a little.

“Come on.” Peter, still dressing, came out. “We can get breakfast there.”

“Where? Where’s the meeting? Where do you meet?” He realized he didn’t know.

Peter looked at him. “The Hear Say.”

And didn’t that just make Mike’s heart plummet. Of all the fucking places…


	9. Chapter Nine

Yeah, whoever was up there had some twisted sense of humor, Mike reckoned, first in sending a horny, lewd and unpredictable British chick to save Peter where Mike couldn’t and now in sending Mike and Peter back to _that_ place. The Hear Say coffee house on Sunset held black memories for Mike—it was the place where Peter had discovered Mike’s deception and manipulation, behavior that had almost driven them apart.

And, _oh, Jesus,_ it was only just now sinking in that _he’d_ _done_ _exactly same thing again_. He’d once more forced Peter into a lie and deceit, given him no option but to go along with a situation he hadn’t asked to be in, made him a bit player in his own life. In the horrific aftermath, Peter had told him, _warned_ him that if Mike ever— Mike’s hands shook on the wheel and he hunched forward, cold and sweating.

“I…I gotta pull over. I think I’m—”

“Yeah?” Peter still faced the road, didn’t look at him. “Welcome to the club. And no. Deal with it. I’m having to.”

Neither spoke again until Mike parked near the café, the longest car ride of his life. “Peter—” he began at the same time as Peter said, “Michael.”

Both stopped but neither laughed.

“I…” Mike threw the door open, dry heaving, thankful there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. He subsided back into his seat. “Please…” He dashed at a tear in his eye that he pretended had been caused by the strain of retching.

“I realize you didn’t orchestrate that, back there.”

Oh, when Peter went formal on him… “But I didn’t stop her and I…was glad she did it.” And damn if Peter’s inconvenient honesty wasn’t catching. “It was wrong.” He got the guts to turn to Peter.

“You were angry, back at the pad. Not nervous or scared.” Peter still faced front as he puzzled it through. “But not angry with me.”

“No!”

“For having caused the problem, or because you thought I’d committed a crime.”

“I don’t need to answer that.” He took Peter’s hand, as he was doing more and more, and rubbed his thumb over the back, his hands still shaking and clammy. “I’m still angry. With myself, yeah. I know you said not to, what, wrap you in cotton wool, any of you, but dammit, Peter, not being able to protect you? To stand up for you when I _am_ your alibi? I should have, right? Told the truth and damn the consequences.”

“I don’t know,” Peter surprised him by saying. In the silence that fell, with them looking at each other like that, Mike knew Peter, like he, was pondering the possible consequences of such an admission. A confession of homosexual acts? That they lived together as partners, and shared a house with two other guys, both minors? “In an ideal world, yes,” Peter finally said.

“Which…you’re trying to bring about.” _Jesus._ All that Peter worked for, stood for… “I’m learning, darlin’. I really am. Please don’t leave me. I can’t lose you. I just can’t.” He brought Peter’s hand to his lips and kissed it, looking Peter right in the eye, making no attempt to wipe away his tears. Not now. Not this time.

When he spoke, Peter’s voice came quiet and still. “That’s two strikes.”

“What— Oh.” His heart skipped, knowing hope still existed, and yet his chest hollowed out in fear that he’d screw up again. “I’m learning,” he whispered. “Understanding. _Oh._ Your lyrics… I really get them now. Get _it_. ‘In this generation…’” Mike indicated the meeting-place coffee house, the people their age hurrying in for a meeting. “You really do want to make the world shine, don’t you? ‘Love is understanding.’”

“Don’t you know that’s true?” Peter asked.

He did now. Well, was starting to. “Love _is_ understanding. It’s in everything we do,” he replied, sitting up straight, as wide-eyed as Peter had gotten. He opened the glove compartment for Peter to pull out paper and pencil. Jotting the words down there would suffice until Peter got to his notebook, the song he’d been working on for years now having another section added. And it was so true. Mike was coming to understand so much, for Pete’s sake. He grinned. When Peter looked up, his scribbling over, Mike took the paper and pencil and wrote down a possible three-word title for Peter’s song, all in block capitals so there could be no mistake. The smile Peter gave him in exchange was balm to his soul. No, like the sun coming up, lighting the whole landscape. Then Peter started laughing.

“What? What, darlin’?”

“Don’t think you’re off the hook.” Peter wiped his eyes. “Because I will be reminding you and oh, _so often_ , that you had to get a _girl_ to do your job for you!” He descended into splutters and giggles as Mike poked him, then tickled him like he did Micky. “Our fearless leader saved by a chick!” came Peter’s final dig before he sobered up. “Well, women are the future…”

Okay, fine, but does that mean he has to have a goddamn harem? came Mike’s peeved thought a minute later inside the coffee house where a whole crowd of chicks swarmed Peter, all of them slim and tiny and pretty and long brunette-haired, or so Mike’s paranoid vision saw them. All hugging and hanging on to him, stroking his face and smoothing his hair, they all spoke at once, asking what had happened, why hadn’t he called last night, they’d all seen the pictures in the papers, had he been arrested… A few of them had been bundled into police vans, and a couple taken to the Southwest Division station—they’d all been harassed and let go. No detentions. No busts.

“Yeah, me neither,” Peter was explaining as they entered the meeting room in the basement that was the group’s HQ. Mike eyed its poster-hung walls and paper-strewn tables, Amanda’s words about police spies being planted in protest organizations rattling around his brain. He wasn’t naïve enough to dismiss the idea as hysteria, exaggeration, imagination… He’d been involved—was still mixed up with—the Intelligence Service, and the last time he’d been in this building, an officer had in fact bugged one of these rooms. It would be so easy to plant listening devices in this one.

Examining some of the paperwork in its racks and slots on one wall showed him this room was used by a few groups and committees as a postal address, probably even other associations or cooperatives Peter belonged to, all as radical and ‘counterculture’—God, he hated that label—as this one.

Had Mike expected anyone would come forward in the hush that fell as Peter concluded his tale, would admit to, or even boast about the vandalism committed on the compound? He didn’t know, but sure was hopeful. Was this the whole collective? A list of members hung near the door. He tried to count the names, tally them with the number of people present—

“Well, I think whoever did it deserves a medal!” declared one of the girls. Seated at what looked like an arts and craft table and almost invisible behind pots of paint, an array of brushes and sheets of cardboard, she clipped out the newspaper article and passed it along for another chick to paste into a book.

“Not that we’re condoning law breaking,” Mike shouted over the chatter, just in case, as he eyeballed the group. Most, if not all of them, must be handy with a paintbrush and paint, if they made their own protest signs, but none of them looked capable of smashing their way into a locked vehicle and busting it up.

“Sorry, and you are?”

Mike whipped around at the guy’s voice. So there was at least one other…and at the back, not in the thick of things with Peter and his handmaidens. The smooth-haired guy had a sour look on his acne-scarred face. Mike narrowed his eyes, getting a read on him.

“Just, we’ve never seen you here before. And the day after a protest at which we were shaken down by the pigs, here you are. Looking like that…”

Yeah, he was wearing formal pants, not jeans, and a button-down with a tie, for Christ’s sake. He hadn’t changed from his ‘wrongfoot the cops who were expecting a peacenik’ outfit of earlier that morning.

“This is Mike.” Pere stepped up. “He’s my—”

“Bodyguard?” sneered the guy.

“Partner.” Peter smiled.

Mike could hear, if no one else could, the collective, “ _Huh?_ ” this provoked. He wanted to add to it. It was odd, hearing the word like that. Disjointed, blunt and blank, almost, the definition of what they were to the other, when said out loud to strangers. _Like I did to Pete. Oh, man._ They had to find a better word. Had to discuss it. He hoped everyone was cool with it. Well the guy didn’t seem to be, judging by the degree his sneer ramped up. The chicks… Mike almost staggered backward at the way they were ogling Peter and now him. That light in their eyes— _speculation?_ _Challenge?_ _Good grief._

The room soon split into smaller units, some discussing the statutes and bylaws the police had invoked to ban them from the property under and some the next protest planned. Someone—Mike wondered if he was one of the owners of the premises—wheeled in a trolley of drinks and snacks. Mike helped himself to a much-needed coffee and a misshaped Danish. He bided his time, and when the guy left the room, slipped out after him.

To the men’s room, as it turned out, where Mike stood leaning against the sinks when the guy turned from the urinal.

“Jesus!” he squealed, stumbling, half zipped up.

“Careful there.” Mike slowed and darkened his accent. “John, right?” He’d seen the name on the  list.

The guy nodded, wary. _Good. Not totally dumb._

“Wash your hands,” Mike said.

“What do you want?” John asked, darting his gaze around the small room.

“Wash. Your. Hands.”

Muttering that he’d been going to anyway, the idiot ran the faucet and splashed water on his hands, then dried them on a paper towel. He half-turned to throw it into the basket, which was when Mike struck, in the blink of an eye, shoving his weight into John and crashing him against the far wall—hard. He caged him in, one elbow in his windpipe and his other hand pinning one of the guy’s hands to the wall, using the median nerve pressure point in his wrist. It hurt, Mike knew, and hurt more if the victim struggled against it, which this idiot was.

“Say there, John, you wouldn’t happen to have committed that act of trespass last night, wouldya? Vandalised property, destroyed other property? Maybe to get Peter in trouble, take his place here? He’s mighty popular, isn’t he? Looked up to, respected, desired… You wouldn’t be jealous now, would you, John? Answer me anytime you like.”

He gave the guy a few more seconds before he removed his arm from his throat.

“ _No!_ _Jesus_ , no!” John gasped, sawing in a breath.

“Really?” Mike struck again, reapplying the pressure to John’s trachea, watching his face turn redder by the second, then removed his arm again.

“ _I swear!_ ” John choked out.

“Do you know who did?”

“No! I’d say if I did. _Please!_ ”

“Okay, then! We’re done here.” Mike stepped back, sprightly as a spring lamb. “And oh, see how nice I am, Johnny, waiting till you’d taken a leak? _Else you’d have pissed yourself,_ he didn’t say. Didn’t need to.

The meeting was winding down when he returned to the room. “Hey, I have no standing here,” Mike began, getting everyone’s attention. “But just to say it seems the cops’ll be looking for a patsy, so I suggest you all get your alibis arranged. That’s all.”

“Nice public service announcement,” Peter began, breaking off when John limped back into the room, giving Mike a wide berth. Peter raised a questioning eyebrow at Mike.

“Time to go, Pete.” Mike jerked a thumb at the exit. He didn’t like how quiet Peter became again on the journey home.

“You think I’m naïve,” came Peter’s only comment as they finally turned onto North Beechwood.

“I think you’re perfect,” Mike replied, not even having to think about it. As he pulled in as close as he could to the garage, he added, “Oh, and good morning.” He hadn’t said it yet.

That got a half-smile—it had become a joke between them, that it got later and later for them to say it or reply to the other’s greeting. “Oh, and I love you.” That got the missing half of the smile—Peter would reply to that later too—and Mike got in a slap at Peter’s ass, made possible by Peter’s slow exit from the Monkeemobile. “Whatever this is, we’ll get through it, and together, okay?” Mike added.

Peter nodded without turning round, and Mike hoped his words were true. He got out of the car, and Micky slid out from under the green jeep, giving Mike a mild Monkee scare.

“Hey,” Mike said. “Did Davy catch you up with stuff?”

Wiping his hands on a rag, Micky nodded. “Yeah. We’ll all help, right?”

That was practically Micky’s mantra. _No, wait, more like blonde, long legs, short skirt._ Or was that more of a prayer? A visualization? “Right.” He dodged the oily rag Micky sent his way and pulled down the cap Micky was wearing, making its peak cover Micky’s eyes. “How’s Cee-Cee’s willy?”

“Cee…” Micky gave up on that, righting his cap. “Her willy’s fine. I…powered it up a bit for her. She called, actually.”

“About the car,” Mike guessed. And that Micky had told her to buy it, and that she probably had.

“Yeah, and to say…” Micky chewed on his bottom lip. “That Peter should pack a bag—”

“ _What?_ ” What the hell had she found out?

“—of stuff to leave at her house, in case someone drops in to check up on him. Them. Just leave clothes and shoes and crap lying about.”

“Oh.” Yeah, he could see—

“Uh-huh, so Davy packed one, for him. Oh, and she sent Toby away? In case she gives the game away.”

Yeah, Mike could see that too. “Where? How?”

Micky replaced a screwdriver into its slot in the toolbox. “Her godmother’s. Amanda told Toby not to forget her godmother’s fortieth birthday, with its party, and so on.”

For a slob, Micky kept his tools neat. Mike admired the orderliness of the flathead and Phillips screwdrivers, arranged by sizes. “Does she have a birthday this weekend?” he inquired.

“To quote the dame herself when I asked her that: ‘How the bloody hell should I know?’”

Mike had to grin. He picked up a roll of thin wire and pulled it straight to coil it tighter. “I wish she’d come on home. I need to know she’s okay.”

“ _Aman—_ No. Your bike, right?” Micky sighed, shaking his head. He peered along the road and suddenly straightened up, then whipped off the cap and patted his hair. Deciding that wouldn’t do, he stuck his head into the garage, to grab the comb from near the mirror and attempt a better _coiffure_.

About to ask why, Mike recognized the sound of his bike approaching. _Oh God._ Micky was tarting up—to quote Davy—for Amanda. Mike filed it away to address later. For now, he was too busy peering at Amanda’s face as it came nearer, trying to gauge what she’d discovered, and how worried he should be.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a turn for the comedic and the poly. Apologies in advance.

Peter must be right, in saying this was Mike’s punishment. He hated having to rely on anyone, and now, _this_ woman? God alone knew what she’d demand of him in return. Wait—it seemed to be becoming a pattern? Another woman, who’d also helped him out recently, also had a marker to call in on him. _And she would._ Recalling the strange Dr. Lorene Sisters and her very particular tastes made Mike gulp. “Might not be too bad?” he muttered, fingers and toes crossed, pulling Mick aside for Amanda to draw up.

“Hi!” Amanda stopped smoothly in front of them. “He handles great, Hubert does.”

“Yeah, _Jaqui_ moves like a dream.” Mike tried not to make it obvious he was checking his bike over as he wheeled her into the garage. Amanda hugged Micky in gratitude for his mechanic skills, and Micky tried to cop a feel of Amanda in response. Mike beckoned her into the garage, and jerked his thumb to send Micky away.

“So.” Amanda took off the heavy jacket and straightened her clothes. She passed the keys over when Mike held out a hand. “Any of ’em do it?”

“Not the women. Too…peace-loving. There was one guy. He’s jealous of Pete. But…” Mike shook his head.

“Too much of a big girl’s blouse?” Grrring in irritation, Amanda scooped her purse from the saddlebag to flick through her dictionary. “A panty waist?” she translated.

“Something like that. But there _was_ something there, at the venue?”

“Umm. The vandalism was real.”

 _Damn._ “Go on?” he prompted.

“Graffiti. Some was being painted over as I got there. I saw SAY NO TO RODEO, like the sign. Legalize marijuana, ban the bomb…” She shrugged. “I took photos, so we have a record, which should take us further? I’ll have the prints developed in an hour or so. I just passed the supplies I ordered, their delivery van.”

Noises outside suggested her order had arrived, and curiosity drew the others out. Any admiration they felt at Amanda being able to print her own photographs was followed by dismay that she intended to do so right there. _In the pad._

“I can’t go into the magazine offices at the weekend. And I can’t stink up the Willises’,” she argued, standing firm over her boxes just outside the front door. “Look, go and take care of Peter’s errand.”

Mike had no choice but to catch the set of house keys she skimmed across to him.

“And then you should all be trying to cheer Peter up. So go on, do whatever the local equivalent is of taking him to Bazaar on the King’s Road for the latest in pubic hair design and color,” she nagged

“Erm…” Mike felt a little faint.

“Okay, to a Soho coffee bar-equivalent to flirt with the Italian waiters?”

“Not happening.”

“So I suppose there’s no local version of a Knightsbridge wine bar to take the piss out of the Hoorah Henries?” She looked from one to another. “Well, you must have some stuff to do?”

“Yeah, like lunch,” Micky muttered.

“Aha! Behold… As if by magic…” Amanda waved a hand into the distance. “Bear with me… Any minute now…” She held the arm-outstretched pose until the delivery trike from Pop’s came along the street and up to the door. “Thank you, Lara. Now, if you’d all line up. In order! Meaning Micky first.”

Micky preened. “What order? Looks?”

“Alphabetical,” Amanda corrected.

“Huh?” Micky, mouthing the alphabet, pointed to Davy, then himself.

“English is by surname, you twerp,” Davy told him.

“Doesn’t make much difference—they’re mostly the same.” Amanda clapped out a quick rhythm to get them all marching up and along to receive grease paper parcels. A second pass got them small paper boxes and a third quick-turn netted them a different cold drink apiece. “You can swop the different salad sandwiches and slices of cake and fizzy pop among yourselves,” Amanda instructed, taking her share.

She handed a too-big tip, again, in Mike’s opinion, to Lara, waving her off. “Now, out from under my feet. Go and have a picnic.” She gave a whistle.

“Who are you calling?” Micky asked.

“Timmy the dog.” Her smirk was eclipsed by Davy’s guffaws of laughter.

“ _Timotheus der Hund?_ ” Peter queried. “I only know them in German.” He laughed too, and Mike was glad to see it, even though he was as much at a loss as Mick.

“Does that,” Davy wheezed, “make _you_ Aunt Fanny?”

“Well, when you have a willy, seems there’ll be a fanny at some point.” Amanda patted her jeep.

Mike wondered if fanny meant ass in British. It…didn’t seem to. And why aunt? But she did seem to have gone maternal, or maybe sororal, rather than flirtatious. He kinda thought he’d preferred the former.

“ _Shoo!_ ” she urged, when they still stood there. “Go and find a suspicious gypsy encampment where they’re involved in a robbery.”

Davy mopped his face. “That was last month, luv.”

“Fine. An empty house where stolen goods are stashed?”

“Been there, done that,” Mike informed her. “Well, an apartment.”

“Okay, a haunted house that’s not really haunted?”

“Pur-lease. That’s, like, _so_ last year,” Micky scoffed.

“ _Fine!_ ” Amanda stamped a foot. “Scientists being held captive by foreigners.”

“Hey! Have you been reading my diary?” Peter challenged.

“ _Grrrr,_ go!” she demanded.

“Okay, Cee-Cee. Guys, c’mon.” Mike led them away.

“CC?” Peter queried.

“Amanda’s nickname. Acquired because it’s black and white?” Mike shrugged.

“Oh!” Peter chuckled. “That’s funny.”

“Wait, what?” Mike stopped and shaded his eyes to look at Peter. “You get it?”

“You mean you don’t? Is it too…bamboo-zling for you?” Now Peter was almost doubled over.

“Good one!” came in a British shout in their wake.

“I still don’t…” He gave in. Mike would play the fall guy anytime if it made Peter happy.

* * *

He was more hesitant than happy a little later. “Guys…are you sure this is…”

“Mikey, Mikey, Mikey.” Micky straightened up from fiddling with the control panel. “Amanda wouldn’t have given us the keys to a place that contained a lovely big hot tub if she didn’t want us to use it, now would she?” Grinning, he pulled off his shorts—and briefs.

“Woah woah woah!” Mike cried. “You’re going—?”

“ _Skinny_ dipping,” Davy interjected with a snort.

“Mike! Don’t be so square, man. Pete’s BA already. Look.”

“No no—no look, no look!” Mike burst out, although he did, at where Peter was now sitting inside the large sunken rock pond thing at the end of the pool, leaning back against its side, his toned arms outstretched along the sun-warmed stone rim and his muscles cording and flexing. Head back, shades on, he looked so fucking gorgeous. Was Peter in the water even sexier than Peter on land? _Tough call._ Mike needed more examination of the evidence.

“Mike, think about it. This is to cheer Peter up right, make him happy?” Davy picked up one of the bottles of drink, held it out for Mike to open, then passed it to Peter, it being root beer. “So you _should_ let Micky strip off.”

“Huh?” came from at least two of them.

“I know seeing Micky starkers always gives _me_ a good laugh,” Davy finished.

And Lord, if that wasn’t just so typical Davy. It took a few seconds, during which you were still reacting to the first part, for the zinger to kick you in the ’nads.

“No offense.” Davy pointed his bottle of soda at Micky.

“None taken at this moment, although I reserve my option to take both offense _and_ revenge later,” Micky answered from his seat inside the tub.

“Mike?” Davy appealed, unbuttoning his shirt.

“I’ll allow it. Wait. _You’re_ going…” Words failed him at the now near-naked Davy.

“Sky clad,” came in a baritone rumble.

“Thanks, Pe—what? Never mind. You too?” Mike averted his eyes from Davy shimmying out of his shorts.

Davy gave that cheeky grin and shrug of his. “When in Beechwood…” He sank down into one of the slightly scooped-out hollows in the whirlpool bath and a beautific smile spread across his suntanned face. “Peter, you want to cheer up? Move and sit there.” He indicated a second indentation, although Mike supposed you could sit anywhere on the slabs of shelves inside the huge basin thing.

“Why?” Peter nevertheless moved. “Ohhh.” A matching smile wreathed his face too, and his muscles bunched, then relaxed. He leaned back again and it was a glorious sight again. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yeah. With Toby.”

“Oh, _ewww!_ ” Micky stood and made for the steps.

“Mick! Fuck’s sake! Stay under the _water_ , man!” Mike yelped. “No one wants to see little George waving around like that!”

“Someone might. And it’s just George, okay?” Micky pressed his lips together.

“Oh, you’re a big boy now?” Mike couldn’t resist quipping.

“Mick, siddown.” Davy splashed him. “It’s not like that with Toby. She’s not like that.”

About to ask _like what_ and _like what_ and _she’s_ _like what, then?_ Mike thought better of it. He hadn’t understood the Davy-Toby dynamic since the second they’d met so doubted he would now. _Would ever._ He kinda liked this closed-off area to one side of the house. It looked more like some fancy hotel spa and pool to him, with its wooden decking, lockers, loungers, and greenery. A fragrance came off the warm swirls of the water. Eucalyptus? Okay, as long as it didn’t overpower Peter’s natural scent, that wet salt of the sea and dry sand of the beach with its apricot and herbal threads.

“Mick, sit there.”

Micky did as Davy bid for once. He squeaked and a dazed smile filled out his squashed face. Mike stole another gaze at Peter. He had his St. Christopher surfer medallion around his neck, as he always did in the water. It shone on his strong throat. Mike tore his gaze away. “Is anyone taking notes?” he asked.

“For Amanda? That what she wanted? Hmm. We’re getting off lightly then,” came from Peter.

“Hey, don’t mention getting off. Not under these circumstances,” Davy begged.

“Guys, we’re supposed to be having a meeting!” Mike insisted

“We’re not a quorum.” Peter patted the tub’s rock edge invitingly.

“Fine!” Mike yanked off his shirt, responding to cries of “Off off off,” and the hummed sleazy music with a one-finger salute. He was shallow enough to relish the silence that followed when he peeled his briefs. “Gents, I ain’t got nothing you ain’t seen before,” he told them, his ambiguity deliberate.

Peter lowered his head and pulled down his shades. “Anyone wanna trade?” he inquired.

Three heads turned to him. He held out his slice of cake. “Anyone get carrot? I’ll trade you.”

“I’m plain vanilla, me.” Davy indicated his bag, his smile making his full lips perfect. “At least I think that’s what the V stands for.”

“Guys,” Mike said faintly. “I don’t think I can take any more of whatever disease or disorder Amanda has, the one that’s infectious and makes everybody around her as lewd as she is.” Especially when he saw Mick had chocolate cake and was gearing up for a witticism. “Can we discuss the job offer?”

“If you get in and sit…there,” Davy directed.

“ _Je-sus!_ ” Experiencing the bubbling geyser of warm water up extremely close and very personal made Mike understand the others’ blissed-out expressions. “It’s gonna be a long afternoon, I see. So, With a Twist—”

“Which is the name of a club and not an action, in case anyone’s wondering…”

“Thanks, shotgun.” Grinning, Mike flicked water at him, then explained that plus-wise, this venue was on the Strip, like the Duke Box where they'd had a week’s residency, making it next door to West Hollywood’s top venues and he’d gotten a good rate agreed, but minus-wise it was liquor-free, so kinda bubble-gum circuit.

“But, like Micky learned, scouts for that new local music showcase slot, _LA Live_ , on _Hubbub_ , are gonna be hunting at all the clubs for groups. So, the more exposure—”

“Present company excepted,” Davy told Micky.

“We get, the better,” Mike finished.

“You mean it could lead to bigger things?” Micky snickered.

“Motion carried?”

Davy had just finished signing the meeting book when he sat up straight and alert, his head revolving slowly. Mike swore the li’l biscuit’s ears pricked up and he sniffed, scenting.

“Chicks!” he announced, bounding from the tub. “Just down the slipway, on the sand. Two of 'em.”

“Put on some shorts!” called Mike.

Sure enough, Davy was back within a minute with Soozie and Beth, who drew Micky to her like a magnet, and the four of them went to frolic in the pool.

“Peace at last. Apart from the transistor radio and the screams,” Mike said, stretching out to relax. “Wait. Forgot something, the finishing touch…” He scooped Peter’s cowboy hat from his bag and put it on for him, on the back of his head, framing his face and hair. “There. Perfect. Er.”

“Why do I think this is not to protect me from the sun but just because you like the look of it?” Peter squinted at him.

“Babe, no! I _love_ the look of it!” Mike protested. He felt himself unwinding, bit by bit in a way that had nothing to do with the joint Peter had lit and that Mike took tokes from, pushing himself belly-down full-length on the water to float up to Peter’s hand: Pete had said that was just mild, after-lunch stuff.

“This is good. Just being.” Peter exhaled.

“Umm.” Relaxed, happy, Mike took mental stock of things. Amanda, playing reporter, hadn’t indicated the damage, the vandalism, whatever, had been as bad as the cops had suggested and Peter had an alibi. She— The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as a telephone trilled. Confused, he followed the noise to a locker built into the wooden partition and opened it, to find an outdoor extension, one that was shrilling.

“Hello?” He’d kind of expected it’d be Amanda. Things has been too good. “What?” He blocked his free ear against the pool noises to catch her words.

“I’m at the rodeo,” she repeated. “I just found out the animal stuff that was destroyed was Goldie Locks’.”

It took Mike a second to understand and then to process the name. It sounded familiar…

“Semen from the Eastmans’ bull!” she half-shouted. “It was all ready for sale—buyers coming today—and it was trashed. That’s a fortune gone. And the owner’s son—”

“Chase,” Mike said dully.

“Is fuming, Mike. _Really angry._ Like, law-into-own hands angry. The police warned the Eastmans against frontier justice as it would wreck their case, and I think that, plus them having meetings and rehearsals and PR to do today is the only thing that— _Get off! Don’t—_ What do you think you’re—”

“Manda?” Mike’s stomach turned over.

“Michael,” came the slow drawl. “Apologies, ma’am. When the lady said she knew you, it weren’t no big deal to get her to call you so I could follow her—seemed a quick way to get a message to you seeing as you ain’t answering _your_ phone. So, you’re sheltering the lyin’ bastard who did this to us.”

“Peter had nothing to do with it!” Mike shouted, incensed.

“That so? Then he can come and tell me that to my face, can’t he? I’ll know if he’s telling the truth, and I’ll believe him. Else I gotta come for him, and ain’t no one gonna like that. So what’s it to be, Michael? He man enough to face me?”

“Chase, that’s—”

But the line went dead.

“Michael?”

Mike's mouth was too dry for him to reply.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a bit poly. Apologies in advance.

He must have been standing there rooted to the spot, as immobile as a department store dummy, because Peter slid the receiver from him and replaced it on its cradle. He took Mike’s hand. “What happened? Is Amanda okay?”

Just how _Peter_ that was, that concern for someone else, thawed Mike like nothing else could have done right then. “Yeah. Chase wouldn’t hurt her. Or any woman. He ain’t the type.” In the silence that followed, he took a deep breath.  “Pete, how much did you hear?”

“That the prize bull semen that was ruined belonged to their animal and was worth a mint. And I’m guessing Chase is out for blood. No pun intended. And specifically, my blood, if the cops told him the anti-rodeo sign he’d seen me carrying was found among the debris, meaning that, of course, I must be responsible. What with me being a long-haired peacenik protestor and all.”

Mike’s words, when they came, tumbled over one another. “And the cops will also have told him you have an alibi.”

“Which Chase knows is false.” Peter shaded his eyes to look at him. “He met me, remember? Met us?” _And you told him we were—_ His eyes, glittering topaz, showed the rest of his thoughts. He didn’t need to say them and Mike was glad he didn’t.

He thought fast. Chase was mad as hell, and knowing Pete’s cover story was cooked-up would’ve gotten him madder. He’d accused Peter of lying: with that knowledge, had he tried to convince the cops Pete’s story was fake—tried and failed?  Or…maybe he even couldn’t mention it. _That._ Not with having the father he did, being from the background he was from…having the past he did.

The wet slap of feet on the decking had him spinning around, to see Micky and Davy closing in. Mike read Micky’s pale face and half-open mouth with ease. “You caught that, I see.”

“But Pete’s okay?” Micky demanded. “I mean, no one’s after him?”

“The cops told them not to do anything.” Mike sought to reassure him.

“Oh, yeah, _that’ll_ do the trick. And I suppose they’re too busy filling out the police and insurance paperwork to even _think_ about revenge. All that bureaucracy must be _so_ bloody time and energy consuming.”

“ _Davy—_ ”

“Jungle law, we called that where I grew up.” Peter cut off Mike’s attempts to hush Davy. “Vigilante justice is another term for it. I guess the term used near the border is frontier justice.”

“Like a _posse_?” Micky grabbed on to a chair back.

“Maybe. Which is why _I’m_ going to him.” Peter turned to the pile of clothes on the chair.

“Gee.” Micky’s eyes widened and he snapped his fingers in the way that announced a zinger was coming. “In my day, when we arranged a fight, all parties had to meet at the flagpole, not one go to the other’s house to get beaten to a pulp by him and his kinfolk.”

“Fuck you, Micky!”

“Hey!”

Mike hadn’t been aware his hands had balled into fists or that he’d stepped up to be nose-to-nose with Micky until Peter shoved himself between them, forcing them both apart. Guilt and contrition hit Mike like an instant sledgehammer. “ _Shit._ Mick—”

“Breathe, Michael. In…”

Peter made him hold it sadistically long, Mike felt, before instructing, “Out.”

“Micky, sorry,” Mike wheezed.

He heard Micky muttering, “Apology accepted,” but all Mike’s attention was on Peter, until his breathing synchronized with Pete’s, his tense shoulders dropped, mimicking Peter’s posture, and his soul was calmed by the play of light and shade in Peter’s eyes. He ran his palm down Peter’s cheek, cherishing its softness and absorbing its strength, grounding himself in the here and the now of Peter and doing his best to push away the shadow of the past that was threatening to cloud their immediate future.

“Hey, what about _my_ cheek?” came in a whine from Micky, followed by an “ _Oooh,_ ” of surprise. “Well, gosheroonie, I wasn’t expecting to get _that_ cheek felt, but, thanks, I guess?” The speculative look in his eye sent a shiver down Mike’s spine.

Mike supposed he should be glad that the unknown gooser was trying to lighten the mood. “But this is serious,” he said, looking from one to another where they all stood close, as tight as any unit could be.

“Which is why whatever you have in mind should be discussed, rather than you making a unilateral decision.”

“I…I wouldn’t do that. Not anymore,” Mike replied to Peter’s gentle chide. He hoped he’d learned his lesson.

“I can tell you what he has in mind.” Davy picked up a towel and patted at his hair and shoulders, then sent a reassuring wave over to the girls, still in the pool. “And yeah, let’s put it to the vote. How many for Peter’s idea, him going to the rodeo and facing a probably armed bloke who’s mad at him?”

“ _And_ facing off against Charlie Eastman senior.” Chase’s notoriously quick-tempered father. “ _Señor de mecha corta_ ,” Mike muttered, wondering if the other three knew enough Spanish to understand his nickname among the ranch hands. Mr. Short-Fuse. _Iffen he didn’t have a short fuse, he wouldn’t have no fuse at all._ “Vote?”

Peter was the only one to raise his hand.

“So what, we go home, make a barricade, like, _a moat_? No; disguise Peter—as a chick, oh, as his own _sister!_ —so if anyone comes looking, they…” Micky trailed off. “Mike? What?”

Mike swallowed. “Peter, I think…you should go away for a while. Just a little while. Until—”

“This blows over? The rodeo leaves town? _Michael._ ” Peter’s hand tightened around his almost painfully. “I—”

“Expected better of me. You don’t have to say it!” Not when Mike had caused this, by his lying, and then by his blurting out the truth. He guessed he still had a ways to go, as far as lesson-learning went. “So I’m saying it. Who votes for Peter skipping town for a day or two?” Mike added. Three hands were raised. “Heh. Motion carried, babe.” He felt just that little bit better.

Peter exhaled, long and loud. “I see that’s the majority opinion. Is there anywhere in particular I’m being packed off to? Summer camp, perhaps?”

That stung, as it was meant to. As Mike deserved it to. “We’ll figure something out,” he promised, his voice catching, trying not to think of having to spend even one or two days without Peter by his side. But the mere thought of anything happening to him…

They cleared their stuff up, sent the chicks on their way and headed back to the pad, Mike walking so close to Peter that their shadows were one. Questions crowded him. Would this work? Would Amanda be able to stall Chase long enough at Exposition Park for Peter to get away? The cops had said not to leave town, so was this breaking the law? _Well, tough._

He was glad to get out of the sun and into the shade of the pad, but after the eucalyptus scent of the hot tub and the salt of the sea, the place smelled headache-inducing, the chemical reek coming from the bathroom. _The photos._ He’d almost forgotten.

“I can’t go in there. And I’ll need my stuff,” Peter said, pointing.

“Micky, can you do that? And Davy, could you help Pete with his clothes, pack a real bag this time?”

“And you?”

Mike almost grinned at Micky being as quick as ever to feel he was being worked harder, or more put-upon than the others. But, oh, he did not want to be doing this. “I think I’ll go sweet-talk Nyles,” he said.

“Oh? Replacing me already?”

“I…hope that’s an attempt at a joke, babe.” Mike blinked. “I’m gonna go see if you can visit those friends of his we met, the ones who took a house in San Francisco for the summer? You know Nyles doesn’t take much in over the phone, so I’ll jog down the beach and find him.” Not that he took much in face to face, but… “Okay?” He tried to make his one-word, two-syllable question ask so much.

Peter raised an eyebrow. “San Fran? Well, guess I’d better pack some groovy threads. And my beads.”

“It’s only a couple days. It’ll go real quick.”

He tried to convince himself of that as he carried out his errand, but his steps slowed on his return. His mind churned on how to rearrange their set, their songs, if Pete wasn’t back by their gig on Tuesday, but his heart felt heavy and bleak, _hurting_ , already dreading Pete’s absence.

His pace only quickened when he reached the stairs to the pad and the answer hit. He’d go with Peter! Of course. Hire another bike from T.J.’s—guy should loan one ’em one for free after they’d sent Amanda to him when she’d been looking for a car—and they’d ride the coast road and back! Cancel the gig if they had to.

Micky and Davy’d be okay on their own for a few days. He’d get someone to look in on ’em… Yeah, it was the only solution. Nyles’ friends wouldn’t mind receiving one extra. Wouldn’t even notice, probably, if they were anything like Nyles and…

The silence and stillness of the pad wrapped itself around Mike as he entered, choking and burying him. “What?” he demanded of Micky and Davy, standing there in the den. He swung his panicked gaze around. “Where’s Peter?”

“He’s gone.” It wasn’t some schtick. Micky caught Mike’s arm. “Mike, Peter—he skipped out on us. He made up some excuse about looking for his book in the car and by the time we realized he’d been outside for a while, he’d…taken your bike. Musta pushed it like halfway down the street so we didn’t hear anything. Mike, he’s gone to confront Chase.”

“I worked that out myself!” Furious at his own stupidity, for being as naïve as people accused Peter of being, Mike grabbed the car keys. “Well? Come on!”

“If that cowboy doesn’t kill him, this one will,” came Davy’s philosophical summation as he followed the others. “I’d call shotgun, but under the circumstances…”

* * *

It took Peter longer than he’d expected to find Chase. Gaining access to the Hall had been easy – he’d taken Toby’s press credentials from where they’d lain abandoned on a poolside chair. They didn’t have a photo and if anyone looked, they bore a guy’s name. Good thing she had a unisex name. He was doing the right thing, he knew. Deception was never any good, and it never lasted, whereas the truth shone for ever, even if the light was uncomfortable when turned on you.

But inside, he looked around, bewildered. Were all rodeos this informal? He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but people seemed to be milling around, kids everywhere, even a couple of sheep. Holding up the badge around his neck got him through the confusion and noise, into the depths of backstage along corridors and down slopes. “Charles Eastman?” he asked another gaggle of cowboys, unsure if people knew the shortened version of his name. He nodded thanks and walked farther down the tunnel, as their jerked heads had seemed to indicate. “Charles Eastman?”

“Yep?”

“Oh.” Peter regarded the forty-something guy leaning against the wall. Even slouching, he was still tall, and his arm, holding the lead rope of a horse, was packed with muscle, even if he wasn’t as lean as he must have once been. His face was lined; his brown eyes creased and wrinkled from squinting in the sun, and that and his toast-blond hair looked familiar enough for Peter to tell him, “I’m looking for your son. I’m—”

“The protest freak,” someone snarled from behind him.

“My name’s Peter.” He remained facing Charles and not the hostile mob forming behind him. “I’m here to tell your son and you that I didn’t commit the acts of vandalism and damage and I can prove it.”

“ _Get out._ ”

“I’m sorry?” Charles’ reaction confused Peter.

“Leave. Whatever happened, it’s done now. Just go,” the man continued, his voice low.

“Oh. You’re…not angry?” Peter had to ask. Because from Mike had said, and from the scowl lines on the man’s face, Peter would’ve assumed that making his fury known and seeking relief for it was a thing that drove him.

“If he ain’t, _I_ am,” came from behind him as a hard tap landed on his shoulder. Peter turned and, one of three brothers _and_ having a whole host of boy cousins, ducked as he did, meaning Chase’s swung fist passed over his head and hit the wall. To a chorus of jeers, Chase bit back an exclamation.

“You fucken coward. Get on up and face me,” he demanded.

“I will, and I’d like you to listen. I’ll take a punch after if you still want to land one.” Peter raised his voice to be heard above the catcalling and suggestions from those gathered.

“Set Dutch on him. Learn his lying ass some manners,” was countered by, “Hey, don’t risk a good animal gettin’ weirdo rabies,” and overlaid by Chase’s father telling him to go, let things be.

“I wanna land one right now, on a filthy liar.”

“Just get him out of here, kid.”

Chase ignored his father and shook off the parental hand on his arm. Peter got a glimpse of Charles’ face darkening before Dutch’s licking Peter’s face, where he still remained crouched down, blocked his view. Peter stood, slowly, arms by his sides. “My alibi’s a lie, yes, as you know. Why didn’t you tell on me? Tell the cops that I…what you know about me?”

“Well, I… I wanna sort this myself. I got honor.”

The sidelong glance Chase flickered at his father had Peter as confused as Charles’ almost nervous behavior since he’d seen Peter. Was Chase protecting Mike? Could be, but that still didn’t explain everything.

“I’ve got honor too,” he replied, standing straight-on to Chase. He leaned in slightly, to stare into Chase’s eyes, the same shape and color as his father’s, just as his face bore the early traces of the same lines. “I didn’t do it.”

Risking everything on Chase’s stillness and silence, Peter undid the top two buttons of the fastening of his double-breasted shirt, making the placket flap back. He’d stunned everyone into silence, so no one reacted when he took Chase’s hand and brought it to the bib opening. “Put your hand on my heart and you’ll feel I’m not lying.”

He didn’t know how long he waited, his breath stuck somewhere between his lungs and his throat, before Chase’s work-roughened fingers slipped inside the undone plastron and pressed down, the palm warm over the steady beat of Peter's heart. “I didn’t do it and I know none of the group I belong to did. I don’t know who did,” Peter said.

If he’d thought the wait a second ago had been endless, this was interminable. Dutch whimpered and butted his head into their legs. Finally Chase’s fingers tightened. “I…believe you,” he said, his voice a rasp. He huffed out a laugh. “Call me a goddam fool, but I do.”


	12. Chapter Twelve

“What the ever-loving fuck?”

“Charlie, your kid ain’t right.”

“The boy’s a pussy. Shouldn’t’ve let his mama bring him up. He’s soft.”

“Soft? I’d say… _hard_ , more like.”

Charlie pivoted to face the last speaker. “Hold Blossom,” he commanded his son, his eyes on the offending man. He held out the horse’s rope and reins. “Take her off away. No lady should see what I’m about to do.”

“You’m best take Blondie away, then,” advised Charlie’s opponent, jerking his chin at Peter.

“Son?” Charlie twitched the rope for Chase to take it from his hand.

“No. No, Pa.” Chase took a few steps to put himself between Charlie and Peter on one side of the aisle and the group of guys on the other. “Fellas, you know how y’all think I’m queer ’cause I got some learning?”

The head-forward, chest-out way he eyed the row reminded Peter of Mike, who’d be furious at what Peter had done, how he’d trampled all over their group democracy. He’d have to get himself out of that one, have to placate Mike. He resigned himself to breaking out the orange bunny all-in-one, making it work its magic. _Again._

“But don’t none of you at least read the Bible?” Chase continued. “It says right there in the Scriptures, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.”

“It d…’s a good book.” Peter thought he’d caught himself in time. He added a nod to back up Chase further.

“Meaning if Peter here is a victim too, maybe together we can figure out who did this? Seems we have to—the Law ain’t much use, as y’all know. You think I’m queer again, for reading the local newspaper, but from what I saw, there’s a hella lotta rivalry between the sheriff’s department and the police here, so what if we’re caught in the middle of a turf war between the cops and the deputies?”

“Kid—”

“What if a rival TV network don’t want that CBSC channel to get this big televised rodeo deal goin’, to scoop up all the ratings and the big bucks? Look, if these crimes go on, there’s no telling what might come next, to any one of us.” He included his father, whose interruptions he’d ignored, in the stare he ranged across the group. “Hey, and any one or ones of ya got a problem with me, y’all know where my trailer is to take it up with me. Oh, and my pa raised me just fine.”

The clatter of hooves coming up the corridor had them turning. Peter recognized Chase’s horse. He stood aside as Chase took the reins from the stable girl and kissed the face off her in thanks before swinging April around. Most of the opposition dispersed, most of them grumbling.

“Peter, I apologize. Shake?” Chase held his hand outstretched.

“Gladly. I’m happy to accept your apology and put this behind us. I’m pleased you believe me, but I should say I don’t regret protesting. I don’t believe in what you do here and to be true to myself morally and ethically, I have to say that.” He put his hand in Chase’s.

“And I thought I had learning.” Chase shook Peter’s hand and clicked his tongue for Dutch to hold up a paw to shake. A further click had April holding up a foreleg for Peter to shake her hoof. “But Peter—Petey? Pete? You gotta better name?”

“Blondie, apparently, is my _nom de rodeo_ ,” Peter deadpanned.

Chase guffawed, knocking his shoulder into Peter’s to get him walking to the end of the corridor. He traded a kiss for a hat from some almost-swooning chick, handed the headgear over and Peter put it on. “You say you don’t believe in this and don’t respect it—that’s because you don’t know what we stand for, what this represents! Take a look.”

Peter did, all around the smaller practice arena they’d reached, at the animals and the people there. He listened to the shouts and hoots and hollers. He took a cautious sniff of the smells, identifying horse or cattle, straw, and even food cooking.

“You spoke up for your community, your band of protestors? Well, this is a community too, with the same values as yours, I bet. And you’d be able to see that, it you ain’t too closeminded to look, listen and learn,” he continued, outplaying Peter. “Walk with me.”

“And me! Well, us!”

“Amanda.” Peter sighed as she dashed up, taking in the entourage she toted. She couldn’t go into the office at the weekend, but she’d got a cameraman and sound operator from somewhere, _and_ a photographer.

“Just a precaution. All I could think of, on the spur of the moment, to co-opt this crew,” she whispered, looking from him to Chase, checking for damage. Despite the crew moving into position around them, Peter caught her waving off a couple of paramedics, who melted into the crowd.

“But it gave me an idea.” She smiled, all eyes and teeth, into the camera. “Swords into ploughshares…spears into pruning hooks…the cowboy and the hippie protestor should be friends… Never mind, I’ll figure out the title later. Cut to the talent. Them! Oh, and repeat that speech, please, Mr. Eastman?”

Chase did a valiant job of ignoring her. “Rodeos are a community event. People from isolated ranches in a county or even a state get together and show off their skills and their wares. It’s a _fiesta_ and a fair and a sport as much as it is a competition.”

They reached the main arena and the informality again struck Peter. It must have been a gap between the real events: the announcer called out jokes about the kids trying to ride the sheep and a painted-face clown weaved around the children, riding backwards on a donkey. Peter glimpsed what seemed to be a band set-up, mics and amps, high on a small platform. Something about barrels was next up, he heard over the address system.

“But talk’s cheap. The only way to experience it is to walk the walk. Take _real_ steps,” Chase said.

“What do you mean?” Peter regretted the question even as he asked it, and regretted it more when he saw the glint in Chase’s eye.

* * * *

Mike had endured the longest car ride ever, Beechwood seeming to be in a different continent to University Park, never mind neighborhood. “How could he!” he cried again, leaping from the GTO and slamming his door.

“Easily. We’re not that hard to fool.” Micky followed him.

“I meant—”

“I know.” Micky helped him shove through the people drifting about.

“The Monkees?” came a call from a man in an electric golf cart. He stared at their matching blue band shirts and gray pants. “ _Minx_ magazine. You’re to 'come at once. Peter’s taking a drubbing’,” he read from a piece of paper.

“Oh, merciful God in heaven.” Mike threw himself into the cart, pressing his foot down on top of the guy’s as he drove, leaving Micky and Davy to chase them and scramble in the back.

“No, not…you’ll see…”

He did, but didn’t understand, even when waved in the side door of the arena, the arena where six massive metal drums had been set up in two triangles, making two circuits. _Chasing cans_ , his mind told him, but his brain didn’t get it. How could one course hold a competitor finishing, then another starting, riding a tight cloverleaf against the clock, while the other circuit had a rider making a very confused meander around the barrels, having no clue which direction to turn, provoking laughter from the spectators, egged on by the MC’s commentary?

Sure, the figure sat a horse well, even if his style was a little European, to Mike’s eye, with him holding the reins in both hands and rising to the trot like that. _The guy—_ Mike froze. It took the blue eight-button shirt and the announcer’s quips about _anti-rodeo protestors having a lot to learn_ to make his brain understand what his eyes were trying to tell him. “ _Peter?_ ” he gasped.

“He got suckered into it.” Amanda, directing a cameraman, bit her lip. “He wasn’t here for the barrel racing demonstration, last night.”

“So he doesn’t know what to do!” Davy lamented.

“Think you could do better, son?” queried the announcer from his desk just above them.

“ _Yes._ ” Davy’s whistling and waving had Peter trotting over, for Davy to leap up onto the horse’s back and shove Peter off. “Start the bloody clock!” he yelled, cantering for the entrance and making a tight clockwise loop around the barrel on the right.

“I could do better too,” Micky claimed, leaping up into the announcer’s booth and grabbing the mic. Davy’s skill and speed, and Micky’s description and potted biography of him had the audience on its feet, cheering to the rafters.

“ _Peter,_ ” Mike began, his heart settling back into place.

“Hey, pardner!”

Mike turned at the interruption, and Chase skimmed Peter’s Stetson onto his head. He didn’t recognize the horse Chase was riding, but he knew the one he was leading: April. “ _Partner?_ ” he queried, the light dawning when the MC wrestled his microphone back to instruct everyone to clear the arena, they had another unexpected event coming—the no-nothing newcomer was trying his hand at roping…

“No. No. I said no,” was still falling from Mike’s lips as he mounted his ride and rode for the box to the right of the chute. “No…w!” he cried, for Chase to nod and have the steer released, and them set off in pursuit, Chase lassoing it around the horns and turning it for Mike to throw a rope for its hind legs. He got it on his second throw, and they immobilized the young bull between them, the ref’s shout-out of the timing ringing loud.

“ _Shit_ ,” Mike whispered, his muscles, which had, amazingly, held the memory of what to do, trembling now. He slipped from the horse’s back. Awareness returned, freed from the small focal point of the arena, and the whoops and cheers of the spectators threatened to deafen.

“Aww, we incurred a penalty with you taking two goes!” Chase lamented. “Hey, you’d better see to your bouncy friend—he’s back there tryin’ a sign up for bronc riding.”

“Oh my God.” Mike managed to get out of the way, off to the side, with no real awareness of having done so. He was vaguely aware music was starting up, a country music combo now filling the small platform yonder. “Peter!” he cried, grabbing at him as he drifted by.

“There's an Ode longneck B…” Peter murmured, as if in a trance, pointing at the small stage area with its musicians. “Open back… Never seen one in real life…”

And of course by the time Mike had attended to Micky, threatening anyone who let him sign up, much less _sit_ on a bucking bronco, Peter had taken the banjo in question from the country music player’s hands and was playing it himself, accompanying his singing. “That was _Cripple Creek_!” he announced, bowing as he finished.

“More!” yelled the crowd, on its feet.

“Oh…” Peter took a belated look at the redundant musicians, who shrugged and sat down.

“We are talking later,” Mike promised Peter, joining him and giving him his Stetson back before taking over the Dobro resonator guitar. “After this pickin’ and grinnin’.”

“I know,” came Peter’s reply, as they launched into a stripped-down version of _Papa Gene’s Blues_. “Just as I know you wrote these lyrics about me.”

Mike faltered. Oh boy, _that_ boy was gonna get it. He got through the song and both of them span around at the drum-flourish ending, to see Micky, compère duties relinquished, holding his sticks high and grinning madly.

Their heads swung the other way at the sawing violin introduction to _Sweet Young Thing_.

“Davy?” Mike yelped. “I didn’t know you could play the fiddle, man!”

“You never asked me!” came the retort.

Did Peter know _this_ song was about him too? Mike fought against the happy, shining vibes bouncing from his band mate. His mate. His partner. He was mad at him, had every right to be, and planned on telling him so in no uncertain terms.

Peter took up a twelve-string guitar for _The Kind of Girl I Could Love_ , side-eyeing Mike as he did so. Yeah, that was a Peter-inspired song too, the guy changed to girl for convention’s sake. After that number, Peter went back to banjo for the cheesiest hoedown instrumental they’d ever played, more country than anything they did as a warm-up in rehearsals, even. Mike grimaced apologies at the other three, but the crowd clapped and cheered.

“Thank you. We’re the Monkees!” Mike indicated the exit and mouthed, “ _Let’s go._ ” Thanking the actual group and, handing the instruments back, they slinked off.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Davy nudged him and indicated the ranks of people still whistling and hollering. “Biggest audience yet and we’re not getting a penny for it!”

“Pity _You Just May be The One_ isn’t country-rock enough for this,” Peter observed, wriggling against Mike as he passed. “Those lyrics are…great too.”

 _And also about you._ Oh no. Pete wasn’t gonna wiggle his way out of this. Or squirm. Or writhe, underneath Mike, all flushed and sheened in sweat as Mike— _No!_ He fought the images and hurried after the others, through the shouts of congratulations and the pops of flashbulbs, to find they were following Chase, who’d promised Micky he could see the prize bull.

“Just see,” Mike underlined, catching them up. “Nothing else. Not pet and damn well not ride.”

“Hey, not even _I_ pet Goldie. No one so much as touches him, even. Only Pa handles him,” Chase added.

“And, Mikey,” Micky continued, “the roughstock events are tomorrow. Goldie won’t be out and about until…” He stopped at the small crowd gathered in front of the pens. A forty-something guy Mike knew at once, despite not having seen him for several years, came out of a stall and edged around the spectators hanging over it

“Pa?” Chase stretched a hand out to him, but Charlie shook him off before it connected.

“Oh no,” he answered Micky. “Goldie won’t be out and about tomorrow. Won’t be giving us more samples to replace the ruined ones, either. In fact, we’ll be lucky if he’s ever on his feet again.”

“What…” Chase sprinted to peer in the pen. “He’s not—”

“He’s alive.” His father stared at the ground. “Barely. Been got at. Drugged. Can’t move.”

“Oh no!” Peter’s hand shot up to cover his mouth.

“And before you accuse Peter, or any of us, know that we’ve been out there the whole time!” Mike exploded, moving in front of Peter before Charlie’s temper shot back up to its usual off-the-charts heat level. “Chase, tell him.” He grabbed Chase’s elbow.

Chase raised his hand, slowly, jerkily, and covered Mike’s where it lay on his arm. It was a simple action, a mere resting of his hand on Mike’s for just a few seconds, but the light in his eyes as he stared into Mike’s was anything but simple. He dropped his hand and pulled himself free. “Rob’n. I told you before, I ain’t… I can’t…” He pleated his lips and turned his back.

He’d spoken softly, too quietly for anyone to hear, but Peter had followed Mike, to stand near him—near enough to catch Chase’s words and see the look on Mike’s face. Whatever that look was, it had Peter try and fail to form words himself. Eyes round, face pale, he backed away a few steps, then turned on his heel and ran, fast, his borrowed cowboy hat spinning to the ground in his slipstream.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

_Oh no. Not this time he fucken isn’t._ Of the tides of emotion pouring through him, Mike seized on anger. Fury, even, and enough of it to power him after Peter—once he recovered the ability to move again.

“Hey!” he yelled, outside, where Peter was swinging a leg over Mike’s bike. “Don’t you _dare_ skip out on me again! I just chased you over half this goddam city!”

“Oh? You want to go somewhere else special, where you can feed me a bit more of the story of you and Chase?” Peter started the engine. “You know, if things go on at this rate, in a few years I might have the whole picture!”

“ _What?_ ” Mike stumbled back under an onslaught he hadn’t seen coming, not from Peter.

“I should have known—I did know—there must be more to it. It’s been nagging away at me that if Chase provided a safe haven at a time when you were unhappy, why weren’t you happier to see him now? Never mind why didn’t you keep in touch with him. But, well, I’m dumb, right?”

“No, you’re damn well not and you know it. Turn that engine off this second!” Mike ordered. Peter didn’t. Mike glared at a couple strolling by who stopped and looked from him to Peter.

“Or it’s that I don’t deserve the full story?”

“ _Jesus Christ!_ ” Mike yelled. “You expect me to what, bare my entire soul to you?”

“I expect you to try.” When Mike remained silent, glaring, Peter shrugged and revved the bike.

“ _Hey!_ ” Mike jumped out of its path. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Oh, I thought I’d go somewhere special to me this time. You can come find me—or not. And if you do, I want and expect nothing less than total honesty.”

“Oh, and how about you?” Mike could hardly splutter out the words. “I expected nothing less than total agreement with group rules, not just when they suit you or, or, when you think you know what’s best and—”

“And it worked. Worked fine, in fact.”

“Peter!” Mike yelled after his departing figure. “God _dammit_!”

“You do realize you’re both as bad as each other, and so bloody perfect for each other that you make me sick?”

Mike whipped around to glare at Amanda.

“And the whole thing is making me so… Grrrr!” she finished, her fingers hooked into claws, her teeth bared and her face screwed up.

“Hey. Hey, babe.” Micky put an arm around her. “I know. I know. But I’m here, and I’m all yours, sugar! All that frustration, that envy, that… _passion_ , take it all out on me. I can bear it.”

“That’s… _Oh!_ ” Amanda bit her lip, her eyes glinting. “I didn’t realize you were into masochism! That’s such lovely news. So you’re fine with being restrained, gagged and beaten? Whippings? Floggings? What’s the most strokes you can take with the riding crop, oh, and the cane? I’m English, you see.”

“What? No! I don’t…” Shaking his head and looking around for help, Micky backed off. “ _Davy?_ ” he was calling, pathetically, when Mike got into the car and gunned the engine, booking it so fast he nearly brodied.

“I’m getting tired of this!” he yelled to Peter’s speeding figure up ahead of him on the freeway, as if Peter could hear him. “When I catch you up…”

Where was special to Peter, he wondered, waves of concern and conscience making the tide of fury recede within minutes. It soon became apparent they were heading back down into Santa Monica. So, Beechwood. The pad. Yeah, it was a special place. _The place where—_ No, he discovered, pulling up outside and struggling to unlock the front door. He could tell at a glance the place was empty. _Of course._ _The beach._ Or more specifically, the water. He hardly needed Peter’s discarded shoes at the side of the house to tell him Peter was down at the shore. He loved the sound and the scents and the sight of the waves meeting the sand, and the variations within them, depending on the time of day or night they were heard or seen or smelled. Peter knew a ton of poetry and verse about the sea and the shoreline. The ocean had been what had drawn him to California, as much as the music scene. 

“Hey!” Mike yelled again, seeing Peter about to unbutton his shirt, preparing to make his way into the water. “Don’t you even think about it.” He reached him. “I’m so mad at you for taking off like that—twice!— and for just busting up an agreement.” He tapped Peter in the chest.

“And I’m ape at you for feeding me bullshit!” Peter almost shouted, shoving Mike in _his_ chest.

Mike staggered backward, slipping and almost falling on the wet sand. “ _Woah._ ” He held up his hands, palms facing Peter, and stared him in the eye until Peter broke their deadlocked gaze and looked down, wiping his mouth with a hand. “You need to cool it,” Mike said. It wasn’t any kind of a threat or warning—Peter really needed to calm down. He’d be distressed at his behavior, at having let negative emotions rule him, later.

“So.” Peter cleared his throat. “We’re both angry at the other and we both have things we need explained. How to start?”

“Choose fingers to see who goes first?” Mike, his face tight, nevertheless tried a small grin.

“ _Fin—_ ” Peter’s face flushed a deep red and it was obvious he was resisting saying his first few thoughts. “Let me guess. You’ll choose odd and make some comment about your odd finger, with your reasoning being you should mention it before anyone else does. You know, I’ve never worked out if that’s from self-pity or low self-esteem?”

“What. The. _Fuck?_ ”

“Oh, _that’s_ very articulate,” Peter mocked. “It gets me so fucken angry how you’re so hard on yourself, think so little of yourself, when you have so much going for you!”

“And it gets me mad how you play yourself down! Play the—yeah, I’ll say it—the dummy, even! Acting all vague and cloudy when you could and should just shine out real bright and true. Pete, you’re one of the most interesting people and deepest thinkers I ever met!” Mike shouted.

“So now we’re both screaming twisted compliments at the other. Isn’t this just great!” cried Peter.

“Let’s…sit.” Mike exhaled and looked towards the rocks. Peter dropped down and sat, right there in the wash of the waves. _Ok…ay._ “Fine. I’ll go first. But I don’t know how to start,” Mike confessed. “Where to start. What you want of me.”

“I do.”

 _Yeah, you would,_ Mike thought but didn’t say. “Go on?”

“I asked you if Chase was your ex.”

“And I said no.” The continuous sluice and drag of the cold wavelets across his legs added to Mike’s discomfort.

“And you didn’t say anything else, although I knew there was more. So tell me. Now.”

Mike shaded his eyes although the sun was low, almost gone. “About what? The thrill of being done with school—until I realized I had no idea what came next, that I felt lost? I’d already glommed onto Chase and his world and there I was, traveling with him in the local circuit, competing even…so I kinda glommed onto him more. And then, well, I…thought I had feelings for him.”

“And did you?” Peter asked.

“Maybe. Some. I don’t know. I do know that if I did, they’re nothing like this.” He tried to indicate the himandPeterness of them.

“Did Chase have them for you?” Peter wouldn’t let him off the hook.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But it didn’t matter none—he was too afraid of his father to even think about anything like that. But, I, well, acted on my ‘feelings’, said my piece…and he shot me down in flames, Peter.” Mike forced out a laugh that came tinged with bitterness. “He could have punched me stupid, but he didn’t. We…split up. I’d made a fool of myself and lost a friend. Lost a place to go that made me happy. Talking of, you happy now I told you?”

“No.”

“Well me neither!” Mike rallied, threw off the pain of the past. “I’m even madder at you now for making me tell you—it hurts to have things ripped from you before you’re ready, even if the other person deserves to hear ’em and you might never be ready, left to yourself. Oh, and I’m mad at you for ignoring our system, the rules we all made and agreed on.” He raised a warning finger.

Peter knocked it away. “We didn’t take a vote and it wasn’t recorded in the book. And anyway, it wasn’t a valid decision.” He spoke louder when Mike tried to interrupt, to argue about the spirit and not the letter of their democracy being the important factor. “Because the option you proposed, me cutting and running? That wasn’t legitimate. That was _you_ trying to wrap _me_ in cotton wool. Again.” He knocked the heels of his hands into Mike’s upper chest, to underscore his words.

Rocked back, shoving his hands behind him to stay upright, Mike swallowed. _Shit._ Peter was right. And dang if his assertiveness wasn’t—

“So.” Peter exhaled. “That’s a few things aired. Any more confessions?”

“Yeah. One. I want you to fuck me.” Mike didn’t even think. Just let the words fall.

“ _What?_ ”

“I said—”

“I heard what— _Wow_. You sure pick your moments, man!”

“It’s not a moment, babe. I’ve wanted it since Wednesday.”

Peter blinked and gave that shake of his head that flicked his bangs from his eyes. “I thought, well, assumed you didn’t play catcher, much.”

“And I don’t. But Pete, _your_ dick?” He knew a dirty-looking smile curved his lips. “Remember what I said, when I explained to you what anal was like? That when you’re jonesing to take a dick in the ass there’s nothing like it?”

‘“You come harder with a cock up your ass than you ever did before,”’ Peter quoted. “And it’s true. Accurate. You also said I was big. That I’d be a challenge.” The smile that took over his face had nothing in common with his usual sunny beam that showed off his dimple to the world. This one stopped just short of _wicked_ , just as his eyes lost their sweet-caramel hue and took on a darker, stronger, more intent gleam.

“What can I say?” Mike shrugged. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

“It’s not exactly the _heart_ we’re talking about, now is it?” Peter threw back his head and laughed, and the sound lightened Mike’s spirits. “You know, this conversation ended up in an entirely different place from where it started? And from where I thought it was headed? How long has it been since you…received? Is that the—”

“Bottomed.”

“Really?” Peter looked surprised at the word.

“Uh-huh. With the opposite being topping.” Mike was glad Amanda wasn’t within earshot to write it all down and no doubt note the UK versions by its side. And he betted they were probably something stupid to do with cricket, or rounders, or croquet. _Block holing._ _Counter-rucking._ He could just hear her saying them. He shuddered.

“So? How long?” Peter prompted.

“A while.”

Peter raised an eyebrow and Mike sighed. “A good while. Oh, not the folded arms and thinned lips, babe! All right. Over a year. _Well_ over. And no, you don’t know them.”

Peter kneeled up, his face in Mike’s, bringing them nose to nose. “Them, as in… _plural_?”

“Them as in an attempt to blur the identity. The gender.”

Peter’s forehead creased. “The gender? It would hardly have been a chick.”

It was Mike’s turn to arch an eyebrow.

“Oh. _Fuck,_ ” Peter breathed.

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a moment and Mike really hoped Peter, possessed of a remarkable memory, wasn’t mentally going through everyone Mike had seen or spoken to eighteen months ago. He watched him trail his fingers in the salt-waves, not seeming to notice the temperature.

“What about my dick?” Peter suddenly asked, his eyes gleaming bright.

“Pete, do you have to ask? Fine.” Mike resigned himself. “The size, for one thing.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the length and the width.”

Peter scoffed. “I know what size means, Michael.”

“And that you know what to do with it.”

“Oh.” Peter let the silence rest a little.

The evening chill made itself felt, the water cold. Mike peeped at Peter. “Look, there’s no pressure here, babe. If you don’t want—”

“When? Now?” Peter demanded.

“Well, I guess we should go back to the pad first.” Mike grinned. He took Peter’s hand and squeezed, but no answering embrace came. “What, darlin’?”

“All this…the stuff happening with the rodeo. The cops… Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

Mike drew Peter’s hand to his lips to kiss the back. “To my way of thinking, all the things we’re dealing with’ll still be there tomorrow. Don’t we deserve to have tonight?”

His heart rejoiced when Peter copied him and took their joined hands to his face, to run the back of Mike’s hand down his cheek before bringing it to his lips to kiss, saying without the need for words that he agreed with Mike.

Mike got to his feet and tugged Peter up. “Hey, Peter.”

“What?”

“Be gentle with me.” Standing close to Peter, near enough to feel Peter’s breath on his throat, Mike gazed deep into Peter’s eyes, letting him see that while the words sounded flippant, the request was very real, that Mike stood before him, defences down, vulnerable.

“Always,” Peter promised, his voice catching. They remained there, simply being, as Peter had put it earlier, until a larger than usual wave broke high on their legs. “Seventh wave,” Peter observed.

“Sneaker wave,” Mike commented. “Telling us it’s time to go.”

An impish grin took over Peter’s whole face. “It’s cold and we need to warm up. So come on!” He started to race inland, calling, “If we hurry, we’ll have the place to ourselves for a shower!”

They did and it was glorious, long, slow kisses and caresses under the hot water, wreathed in the steam that rose all around them, Peter emitting a high-pitched squeal reminiscent of Davy when Mike bit his nipple.

“See? That proves I don’t do that often enough,” Mike tried to claim, but lost the thread of his argument in the pleasure of nuzzling into Peter’s neck from behind when Peter faced the wall and leaned against it, pushing back into Mike for Mike to soap him—all over.

He stood firm a minute later when Peter, copying what Mike had done to him the first time they’d been in here together, held the showerhead to Mike’s ass to let the flow of water play there.

“Don’t wanna be tasting soap later,” Peter gruffed, his Mike impersonation uncanny. He caught up a towel and dried Mike, standing still for Mike to tend to him in turn.

“Hey, wait!” Mike made a grab for him.

Too late. Peter had left the bathroom bare-assed.

“What if the others come home?” Mike hissed, poking a cautious head around the door. He followed Peter out and followed his example, but carried a towel, just in case. He tore a sheet of their butcher paper free and hunted down a pen.

‘“Do not disturb,’” Peter read, following the movements of the pen as Mike drew a thick arrow pointing upwards. He smirked. “Is that pictograph supposed to represent…something?” He took the pen from Mike and added _Everything’s okay_ underneath.

And it was, Mike thought, finding the roll of tape to fix the paper to the bottom of the bannister, where it couldn’t be missed. Although he hoped the others would stay out, at least for a long time—he had a feeling Peter was going to make him scream.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Inside their room, Peter suddenly stopped kissing him and raised his head, his brow furrowed. “One question,” he said.

“Peter! You must know what to do by now!” Mike fought to keep the yelp from his voice.

“No, yes. Obviously. Why Wednesday? You said you’d been wanting this since Wednesday?” he added when Mike’s forehead corrugated too.

“What— Oh. Right.” Mike pulled him down to the bed and switched on the light, angling the shade just right to bathe them in a soft glow. No time to hunt for matches to light candles, although Peter by candlelight was a beautiful sight. “That’s approximate. But just watching you, being with you when you were taking the Warm Embrace around your favorite hangouts on Sunset? And then you remembered about the surfing competition, so you brought all those psychedelic-looking heads along to the beach with us? It was so perfectly you. So perfect,” he finished in a husk, pulling Peter to lie on top of him. “And can we not talk now?”

He really hoped Peter was as into this as he was. Fine, so Peter was aroused, erect, standing proud, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was ready to pitch. And it seemed Peter was starting on his wisecracking, or stalling, manoevre. “Please?” Mike added. “Please, darlin’?”

Peter gave up on whatever smart-alec reply he might have been contemplating to return to bestowing slow, sensual kisses on Mike, kisses so sweet and yet so potent that they marked Mike’s soul. _Like Peter does_ , Mike acknowledged, stretching out under him, turning his head into Peter’s hand where it rested in his hair and pushing into the warmth of Peter’s fingers sliding from his hip to cup his ass.

He breathed out a half-giggle when Peter nuzzled into his sideburns, scratching his cheek along one then the other, and laughed for real when Peter touched the tip of his nose to his, then eased it down the groove between his nose and top lip, and then the indent in the middle of his chin. He wondered why Peter pulled away, but understood when he leaned over to the nightstand. _For the lube._

“Okay?” Peter murmured, perhaps not so much a question as in response to Mike turning onto his stomach and curling his arms around his pillow.

He nodded, feeling Peter’s body heat a second before Peter nudged his thighs apart to kneel between them, his torso curved over Mike’s back and shoulders. “I’m going slowly,” Peter promised.

Unsure he could control his pitch or tone or even form words, Mike nodded again and, expecting Peter to kiss his neck or nip his ear after that comment, jumped at the wet finger at his hole. It pushed slowly inward, the firm probe _sensuous_. And addictive: Mike’s knees straightened under him so he could arch upward a little, giving Peter more access. Within seconds, Peter was past the ring of muscle.

“Stay still,” he said, and Mike, despite craving more, tried, and had to turn his face, still buried in the pillow, to one side, so he could breathe his anticipation out that way, instead of pushing back onto Peter to assuage it. _It’s too soon to writhe_ , came his thought, which Peter, of course, caught, or at least Mike felt him snuffling back a reaction to something. “I said I was taking this slowly,” Peter whispered in Mike’s ear before he dipped lower, to kiss the little of Mike’s face visible and touchable. “It’s such a trip, how you feel. And it’ll be even more far out when I’m properly inside you.”

It wasn’t what anyone would consider filthy, and certainly not the kind of dirty talk Mike loosed during sex and that got Peter so goddam horny that he moaned where he lay, fisting his cock and cradling his balls, demanding Mike fuck him, right then, fast and hard. And Jesus, how Mike loved seeing Peter come undone like that. Loved undoing him. But that it was Peter, with his shiny honey-coloured hair and glinting tawny-topaz eyes, saying such a thing here, now? It had Mike seeking out Peter’s lips and pushing upward and backward, onto his hand.

But only for Peter to use his body weight to hold him down to continue opening him up at his own pace. Mike felt every milimeter of the second finger Peter added, felt it in the increased pressure and stretch it brought. The hum of satisfaction Peter gave resonated through his chest to Mike’s back, to tickle his ear. Peter scissoring his fingers had Mike moaning his satisfaction. Then came an unmistakable laugh from above him.

“Huh?” Mike managed, his voice thick and coated with pleasure. “My ass amusing to you?”

“ _Deuce,_ ” came the reply.

“Wut.”

“The peace symbol? It’s like I’m making the sign inside you.”

“Goddam hippie.” Mike eyed him as well as he could, from his position, his lips curving into a smile.  “And fucken give me more! Not like I’m cherry, remember.”

At this Peter did nip Mike’s ear, his strong teeth sending a delicious shiver through Mike. “This? Isn’t just about you. I’ll never have this first time with you again. Not like this. Don’t deny me. Let me take my time and enjoy you.”

It might have come out as a plea if he hadn’t trailed his mouth around to that spot behind Mike’s ear that drove him wild when Peter bit it—as he was now, increasing the pressure until it reached what could only be called _devastating_. Peter’s weight kept Mike still, unable to react to the thrills shooting through him, exactly as Peter intended. And when Peter twisted the fingers he had buried inside Mike and stretched him further? “ _Sadist,_ ” Mike gasped.

“This is gentle,” Peter observed. _Well, true enough._ “Because once I’ve got you back in the saddle, I’ll fuck you through the mattress. Or have you ride me. That’d be outta sight.”

 _Bastard._ As if the image he’d depicted wasn’t arousing enough, Peter chose that moment to add a third finger, making Mike suck in a breath and have to force his muscles to relax and accept the stretch and sting. He couldn’t hold back the moan of appreciation when Peter twisted his wrist, sliding deeper and using his thumb to stroke the ring of muscle. Mike’s cock wanted in on the action now but was trapped, rock hard and throbbing, under him. He flexed his hips, rutting against the sheets, and apprehension turned his moan sharper when Peter glided his fingers away and replaced them with the head of his cock.

The breath was stolen from him when Peter pressed forward, breaching the tight ring in one slow push. Sweat coated Mike’s skin and he clenched his eyes shut against the burn and pressure and, when that wasn’t enough, pushed his face once more into the pillow, to blot any tears and muffle any sounds of protest. He’d taken Peter face to face, giving him no quarter, no place to hide his first time, yet Peter was allowing _him_ this face-saving kindness. Peter made soothing noises when Mike’s body stiffened, despite his efforts, his instinctive reaction to Peter’s size and girth.

“Come here.”

It took him a second to understand, to turn his head to where Peter’s voice spoke, and when he did it was to meet Peter’s gaze. It took Peter’s tongue poking at his teeth to make him realize he was biting down on his lower lip. Mike inhaled, deep and slow, letting himself sink into the burn in his ass. Peter managed to kiss him, in that twisted-over position, and Mike opened to him—in all senses—sucking on his tongue and pushing upward to take more of Peter’s thrust deep inside him and still widening him.

“About halfway now,” Peter murmured in his ear.

“ _What?_ ” Mike felt faint.

“ _Kidding_ , sweetheart. I’m fully in. All the way inside you.”

 _Inside me._ The psychological weight anchored him and he absorbed the physical impact a heartbeat later, when Peter rocked gently within him, barely moving. It was like the moment of jumping from rocks into water: everything suspended, even his breath held, yet the next moment right there, waiting to engulf him. He wanted it to last, to stop, to never start. He didn’t know.

Peter pulled back so just the tip of his dick sat inside Mike’s still-tight, still-resisting ass. Then what Mike could see of Peter’s face contorted in pleasure when he plunged back in, hard and sure, sending too many sensations through Mike to chart them. But Jesus, being taken in this way? So completely? Was just so damn good—and even better because it was Peter. The man he loved.

It only took two or three thrusts for any residual pain and discomfort to swirl and mix into pleasure, making his world nothing but heat and nerves and Peter.

“Pete, angle that way.” Mike shifted his hips to show him, then failed to hold in his cry when Peter’s dick brushed his prostate. The next few thrusts had Mike jolting with the ecstasy that Peter’s cock, grazing that bump inside his channel, brought. He didn’t think Peter would last, not with Mike clenching hot and tight around him, spasming as his gland and his cock, still imprisoned under him, were worked mercilessly.

“Mike, I can’t—” Peter’s drives became erratic and he thrust deeper than before, banging so fiercely against Mike’s prostate that Mike, if not screamed, then came pretty damn close with his guttural yell. His climax hit him without warning and like a freight train too. He arched back hard into Peter, his eyes unseeing, hearing nothing but the white roar in his ears, and every nerve on fire while his untouched cock pulsated and spent. He gripped the sheet under him, his fingers clawing hard, and Peter’s final lunge, when he came, shouting a hoarse string of expletives, knocked Mike flat. Peter’s release, the hot pulse of semen inside Mike, was the most intimate thing he’d ever experienced.

Mike needed the silence and stillness that followed, and Peter still lying connected to him. When Peter pulled out, his torso slipping off Mike’s sweaty back so he lay half at Mike’s side with his legs still between Mike’s spread ones, the loss of sensation had Mike aching all over, a different pang to the more localized throb in his ass. Did Peter have his face buried in the pillow too, Mike wondered, once his heart stopped its thundering and his brain started up again and he could form thoughts. Now he could move, he closed his legs to trap Peter’s between his and wriggled his hand that lay between them, for Peter to seek out and grasp.

They lay quietly for a while, fastened together while the sweat and cum cooled on their bodies, then laughed when they both moved at the same time, to curl on their sides to face the other. They moved in unison again, to get close enough to kiss, both too exhausted to exchange more than tiny touches of their lips. When Mike pulled back again, he searched Peter’s face, just as Peter was examining his.

“Was that…” Peter peeped up at him through his eyelashes in that coy way Mike still hadn’t worked out if it was an act. But what he did know was that it made him want to throw Peter down and screw him stupid. Even now his cock, drained limp, sticky, tried to stir at the sight and the idea. “All right?” Peter finished.

“All— _Peter!_ Let’s just say, if I were a chick, I’d be counting back to the date of my last period and feeling worried right around now,” Mike exclaimed.

“ _Jesus,_ Mike!” Peter grabbed him. “We didn’t use a rubber! We forgot! What if I _did_ get you pregnant?”

“Peter…darlin’.” Mike swallowed. “You—”

“Fooled you, you sap!” Peter crowed.

Mike raised a warning finger at him, only to laugh when Peter nipped at it. “Hey,” he countered. “Anyone’s knockin’ anyone up, it’d be me you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mike nodded.

“Well, I guess we could choose fingers for it.” Peter took Mike’s right hand in his and kissed his misshapen finger. “And have you ever thought that this isn’t odd as much as all the rest are even?”

“Ooh, I bet you got good grades in Philosophy, babe,” Mike said. “And it seems we’ll be needing a system, but to see who—”

“Who’s on first.” Peter nodded.

“Because you liked that.” Mike didn’t make it a question. “Liked fucking me.”

“But now I’m confused.” Peter blinked, wide-eyed. “I don’t know which I preferred.”

“You’d best try both again a few times, then,” Mike was saying when Peter’s rumbling stomach drowned out his words, making Mike realize he was hungry too.

“Seems a long time since lunch,” Peter commented.

“It was.” Annoyed at himself for not talking better care of Peter, Mike did his best to mop them up with the sheet. “C’m on. Let’s hunt up some supper.” He whipped the sheet free of the bed when they stood and slipped shorts on. He’d change it. They deserved a clean one…and maybe another shower… “Dunno if there’s much food,” he admitted.

There was cheese and tomatoes and an apple, so Peter sliced them into a bowl and Mike grabbed forks for them to attack the improvised salad where it stood, on the counter. “Love you,” he whispered, feeling he couldn’t go another second without saying it.

Peter nodded. “Yes, I know.” He speared a cube of cheese.

Mike frowned. “Babe, you’re supposed to say—”

“I love you too.” And he gave that evil grin at having fooled Mike again.

“Someone’s playful tonight. Be holding you to that in a while.” Mike gave Peter’s ass a tap as he moved past him.

Peter removed the note Mike had left and, taking the pen, scored through the _okay_ written after _everything’s_ and wrote _peachy_. He leaned into Mike and stroked his ass, smirking.

“Interesting word choice there, shotgun.” Mike swapped his fork for the pen and crossed out _peachy_ in favour of _swell_ , cupping Peter’s crotch through his cotton boxers to make _his_ meaning plain.

“Huh.” Peter drew a line through _swell_ and amended it to _glorious_ , then slipped his hand inside Mike’s drawstring shorts to play with him.

Breathing heavily, Mike replaced _glorious_ with _copacetic_. Peter stilled his hand, but Mike shook his head. “Go on?” he instructed, loving the feel of Peter's hand on him.

A wicked smile took over Peter’s lips as he used the pen to delete _copacetic_ and write in _meritorious_. He eased his hand from Mike’s already growing dick and sat on a chair, indicating the floor in front of him.

Wincing at Peter’s punning, “You can’t top that,” Mike had just begun to kneel down obediently to pay the victor his dues when the door opened and Davy came in. Alone. And one look at his face had both Mike and Peter on their feet, demanding, “What’s happened? And...where’s Micky?”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a bit poly. And a bit silly.

“Davy, babe?” For once Mike didn’t chide himself for his mother hen tendencies. Not when Davy looked like that. He stepped forward, wanting to fold Davy in his arms.

“Mike, put the kettle on,” Peter instructed, getting between them and pulling out a chair for Davy and nudging him to sit. He sniffed him. “Pine freshener and cheap industrial disinfectant—police station? Southwest Division, if I’m not mistaken?”

“ _What?_ ” Mike spun from the stove, aghast, then frowned. “Wait. Pete, you can tell all the different cop shops by their _smell_? No. Ignore that.” He felt stupid. He could usually keep up with the twists and turns Peter’s brain took, the highways and byways he didn’t bother to map out for other people or listeners. He blamed his concern for Davy for disorientating him this time. And yeah, while he’d spoken to Peter about it, and just last night, it seemed more pep talks were in order.

“Find your bust card okay?” Peter pointed at Davy’s pocket.

“Again, what? One of you start explainin’.” Mike knew his scowl couldn’t be helping matters, but couldn’t turn it all the way off.

Davy laughed. “Yeah, when I went to show my ID. Didn’t know I had it—you slip us all one?”

Peter nodded, and Mike made a mental note to check _his_ wallet. The Monkeemobile contained a 'what to do in the case of…' card, in the dashboard.

“You’re welcome.” Peter moved behind Davy to rub his shoulders for him.

“But it was just detained. Detention. Not arrested,” Davy continued and Mike sank to a chair opposite him in relief.

“Why?”

“The happening at the rodeo,” Peter answered Mike for Davy. “Right?”

“Cops were called, for the latest incident, and not in the best of moods, you dig?”

Mike checked Davy over carefully, trying to see if that British understatement masked any…rough handling. He seemed okay, just shaken. _Obviously._ “So they were looking for someone to blame, get the case moving. Right. But why you?”

“I was there and I’m associated with the protestors. Via Pete.” Davy indicated his band outfit. “Well, when he’s dressed. So that seemed a good enough link. They hauled us to the station, shouted at us, couldn’t get anything out of us or on us and got really excited at us being minors.”

“What?” Mike found he was reaching for Davy. Davy might be speaking flippantly, but he was paler than usual and he let Mike fold his fingers around the back of his hand. “Because of curfew?”

“So they called our parents or guardians to come and pick us up, getting their rocks off at the thought of having a go at them too. Even spoke about bringing charges against them.”

“ _Shit!_ ” Mike looked at Peter. “Parents…you mean, Micky’s _mom_?”

“Uh-huh. And so she arrived, steam coming out of her ears. Gave everyone within a mile radius a piece of her mind. Then the cops banged on about her neglectful mothering, what with her son being in undesirable company, associating with long-haired dropout troublemakers and all.”

“Not just hanging out with. _Living_ with.” Mike swallowed, seeing the way this was going.

Davy nodded. “Said his behavior proved he should still be at home, under adult supervision. So she, well, took him back with her.”

Silence fell and Mike was glad of the noise from the tea kettle. Already the place seemed too empty and lifeless without Micky’s energy and presence. If he had to move back home… Mike looked around the pad, seeing so much evidence and so many signs of Micky and his contribution to their communal life, not the least of which was his drumkit. What would happen to the group if—

“He’ll talk her round.” Peter gave a final squeeze to Davy’s shoulders.

“Yeah. My thoughts exactly. A day with him an’ she’ll be dropping him off here in a limo, his lunch packed, his washing done…”

But they sounded to Mike as though they were trying to convince themselves. Then the other shoe dropped. “Wait. That’s Micky. What about you? Parents or… _guardians_?”

He caught Peter’s eye—this was such a gray area it was almost a mist. No; a fog.

“Well, Amanda went with us, you see, and—”

 “And I called Pongo.”

“And ta-da! Hullo in there!”

Mike stared not so much at Amanda in the doorway as the older guy she had with her. Handsome, impeccably attired in white tie—or presumably immaculate at some point, when he’d gotten dressed—he looked a little the worse for wear, his hair flopping everywhere and his eyes bloodshot. _Rakish_ came to Mike’s mind, Peter’s capping it with _louche_.

“Thank you again, Your Lordship.” Davy sprang to his feet.

“Come in?” Mike beckoned, trying to get a handle on things, mouthing “ _Lordship?_ ” at Peter, who mouthed “ _Pongo?_ ” back.

“Lordship be buggered.” The man waved a hand, which made him sway a little. “We’re past that. Pongo’s fine.”

“Otherwise known as the British consul-general.” Amanda gave a full-on smile and raised an eyebrow at Mike’s then Peter’s appearance.

“Oh, ha, um, is it… _optional_ , I suppose is the term?” Pongo gestured from Peter to Mike and had loosened his bowtie and cumberband before Amanda yanked his hands away.

“No. It isn’t,” she said, her voice quelling.

Mike really wished both he and Peter had more clothes on than they did. He could see how it must look confusing— _one way of putting it_ —to an older, high-society guy venturing for probably the first time in his life into somewhere like their pad…when he was more than half-drunk…and seemingly a little high.

“They got me signed over to the consul,” Davy explained, a little unnecessarily.

“We’ll, erm, leave you to it, shall we?” Amanda dragged her eyes from Peter’s bare torso to Mike’s bare legs. She then reversed direction, her gaze lingering on Mike’s naked chest and Peter’s on-display thighs.

“So, we’ll leave the little chap here with you, what?” asked Pongo, patting Davy’s head. “Young man, you make sure you do all your prep and keep a straight bat. Make your house proud.” He chortled. “I’ve never been in _loco parentis_ before! Seems easy enough—I should think about having sprogs of my own. High time, what?” He was still chuckling as he shook hands with them all, handed them all a dollar bill apiece and left, his arm wrapping around Amanda to pull her tight to him. A surprised female squeak was heard.

“ _Loco_ seems about right.” Mike stared after him and then down at the singles they all held. “Is this…an _allowance_?”

“I’m guessing she got him drunk,” Peter ventured.

“He was that already. He usually is. I got him stoned.” Amanda did her popping-back-in thing, calling over her shoulder about having dropped her lipstick. “What else could I do? And sorry, Davy, everyone. I panicked. Ringing him was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.”

“No, I’m glad you did. Thank you. But, Amanda, watch yourself with ’im, yeah?” Davy came close enough to whisper. “As a bloke mesself, I can tell you he’s NSIT.”

“I know!” she whispered back. “Well, I do _now_. He’s always been VSITPQ, you know?”

“ _NSIT?_ ” Mike mouthed at Peter, who mouthed, “ _VSITPQ?_ ” back. “ _I fucking love you,_ ” Mike couldn’t stop himself then mouthing at Peter, on the heels of that stupid exchange. He wouldn’t have stopped himself if he could, he realized, and his heart ticked over that little bit quicker at the almost shy smile that appeared on Peter’s face in reply.

“Yeah, real confirmed bachelor, friend of Mrs. King, etcetera?” Amanda was still speaking. “Wait. I know that one; don’t need my book—friend of Dorothy? So this is…an interesting development. It’s probably the pot, yes? In which case, we’re going to need a lot more…” The light of speculation gleamed in her eye as she exited.

Mike, fighting to keep his hands from shaking, locked the door and went to check the sundeck was locked too. He didn’t think he could take any more arrivals that evening. Morning. Whatever the hell it was.

“Very safe in taxis, probably queer,” Davy was explaining to Peter. “No offense. And hey, I think you lost your bird there, mate. Although I think she’s _off_ her bird. Oooh. Hang about. If they get married, your girlfriend will be my step-guardian. Your girlfriend who Mike’s copped off with, although you haven’t.”

“ _Ooh._ ” Mike covered his crotch at the double-barrelled zinger. “Right in the nuts there, babe.”

“Yep. No stones left un…kicked,” Peter agreed.

Davy grinned. “Oi, and no comebacks—I’ve got diplomatic immunity, me!”

“Well, maybe your butler will make your tea then, Your Junior Lordship,” Mike mock-grumbled, making it anyway. Drinking tea at all hours of the day and evening never seemed to stop Davy sleeping. Mike laughed, picturing Amanda married to the old guy. Would she be known as Lady Pongo? Nah, she’d keep her maiden nickname. So, Lord Pongo and Lady Cee-Cee? Who the hell knew.

“But Mike, Peter, this is serious, you know.” Davy sat again. “The police won’t leave it there. They were so pissed off and they just want a confession, to close the case. They said, over and over, we should just say we were responsible, or drop a dime on who is, to make all this stop.”

“All wh…” Mike’s question trailed off at the Doppler effect of sirens and flashing blue and red lights outside. There were two sets, two cars passing the pad going in opposite directions. Two police cars—at least, he doubted they were ambulances or fire trucks, ones that would slow down to an almost stop as they passed. “Ah. I see. Huh. The neighbors’ll _love_ that.”

“Really? Babbitt won’t.” Peter got up to peer outside.

“And if the cops start poking into other bits of our lives?” Davy looked from one to another, things he’d rather the authorities didn’t stick their noses into clear in his eyes, as Mike felt sure must be showing in his, because Peter’s face spoke of his. “This could get really bad, Mike.”

* * * *

Davy’s words were still ringing in Mike’s head the next morning when he awoke, Davy’s chilling prophecy and not the soothing _hey, we’ll think of something_ or _it’ll be all right_ that he and Peter had counteracted them with. _Or tried to._ He stirred, not wanting to wake the others, and despite his worries, grinning at how they’d asked Davy if he wanted to sleep upstairs with them. They’d cited safety in numbers and ease of defense just in case, rather than force the shaken Davy to have to ask, to admit he’d be too spooked to sleep on his own, with all that was going on and no one in the bed across the room from him.

He was just glad Davy was still so at ease with him and Peter, knowing that they were both not only into guys, but were now a couple. Not just the co-sleeping, but that he was fine with changing in front of them, or them him, for instance, and he’d sat naked in the hot tub with them, with no qualms. Mike hadn’t admitted it to Peter but Davy or Micky treating either or both of them differently, once their more, well, _wide-ranging_ sexual tastes were out in the open and their relationship had changed, had been a huge worry. No; a fear. Not surprising, really.

Mike thought again how cute Davy looked asleep, in his striped pajamas. He tended to wear a complete matching set, not odd pants and tees like the others did around the house. _Must be an English thing._ He might look endearing, all curled up in the middle like that, but jeez, that snoring? Back home they’d have said he was a-callin’ his hogs all night. Mike’s ears were still buzzing. He hoped Peter had slept. How did Micky?

How _had_ Micky slept last night, tucked up at his mother’s house, away from his home at the pad? Mike had wanted to call him, but didn’t want to get him in any more trouble. He’d kept the door open, to hear the phone in case Micky called them, but he hadn’t. If Micky’s mom insisted he moved back home, even for a while, would he? He wouldn’t want to anger or upset her…but the thought of the pad minus that bouncing, sparking ball of energy? Beechwood without its resident Angeleno nutjob to stir things and people up? It wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would, without—

“ _Micky?_ ” He sat, thinking he was hallucinating that crazy-curly head peeping around the door.

“ _You bums!_ ” Micky yelled, pointing at the bed and making Peter and Davy jerk awake, startled. “You slept in a Monkee pile without me?” He launched himself at the bed, managing to land on top of all of them. “Ain’t no Monkee pile without Micky!” came muffled as he wrestled and tickled and poked them. _Ain’t no Monkees without Micky_ , he didn’t have to say out loud.

“Micky, Mick, _Micky_!” Pinned underneath him, hardly able to catch his breath, Mike laughed in happiness. “How d’you get here?”

“Busted out.” Micky sat up against the footboard, briefly in prison stripes and his voice harsh and bitter. “Yeah, tuneled to freedom. Then jumped a railroad car, then hid in a goods truck working this route and the rest you know.”

“You mean your sister couldn’t take any more and gave you a ride here.”

“Well, yeah.” Back to normal, Micky stuck his tongue out at Davy. "How did you get sprung from the Big House too?" He looked at the three of them. “What did I miss? Sock it to me.”

He nodded along as they filled him in. “Uh-huh. So it’s clear what we gotta do.” He stood, dressed in old-timey slacks and a blazer, and hooked his fingers in the suspenders over his starched shirt. “Let’s put the show on right here!” He rolled his eyes at their puzzled faces and was back to normal. “I mean, we gotta solve this ourselves!”

“How? I know you helped yourself to Madame Roselle’s crystal ball, but…” Mike said.

“Look, I’ve read every detective book—”

“In the kids’ section of the local library,” Davy cut in, then sniggered. “Oh, those Nancy Boys. No wait, it was the _Hard_ -y Boys.” When they just eyed him, he sighed. “You know, sometimes I wish we had another Brit in the group? To have someone on my wavelength? I wonder if Amanda plays an instrument.”

“I think…she plays the field,” Peter observed.

“Huh. Not all of it.” Micky’s expression bore the rueful twist of a guy who’d struck out. “But look. All we need to do is talk things over so we can think them through, and I know just the place. A special place. Perfect for pondering. Oh, and nice tent you’re pitching there, babe.”

“Erm, thanks?” said Mike and Peter together.

“I wasn’t speaking to you.” Micky pointed his forefingers at them, making them both turn to look at Davy, then look down when he did.

He shrugged. “When in Beechwood?”

“It's all my fault, I know." Micky posed in the doorway, one hand behind his head, his lips pouting. "You're only human. But you know I really can't be held responsible for the havoc I cause."

"And that's what you want on your tombstone, is it?" Davy threw a pillow at him.

“And what is this ‘think things through’?” Mike asked.

“And what place?” Davy added.

But Micky had turned to go.

Peter grinned. “I think I know.”


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly silly.

Mike slowed automatically when they neared Barney’s Burgers on the Beach with Bowling, or whatever iteration of that name Barney happened to be using this week—he went in for a different variation on that theme so often Mike couldn’t keep up.

“Here?” he called to Micky, up ahead. A reasonable enough assumption. It was a familiar hangout, an establishment they drove local trade to, come the summer, via word of mouth at the beach sports and games, and spelling out the name of the place and drawing an arrow pointing to it in pebbles and stones on the beach itself. Peter and Micky also wrote the name and drew an arrow in the sand when they were out first thing, surfing.

“To sort out gigs? We said we’d play here again, this summer,” he continued. It was a venue they’d been grateful to play for food and later for pocket money their first summer together here. He shot a look at Pete, who’d persuaded him recently that, despite their career taking off somewhat, they shouldn’t forget where they’d started.

Pete’s answering look was mild, but guilt panged through Mike: July was well underway and they hadn’t made time for Barney’s yet. Okay, so last week had seen them playing at the Duke Box every night, but this week it’d only been Tuesday and Thursday. He huffed. “If we’d found the time to play here this Friday, like we used to, we wouldn’t have gone to the damn rodeo and none of this would be happening.”

“Things happen when and how they happen.” Peter accompanied his zen statement by brushing the back of his hand against Mike’s, the most they could do in public. “Hey, you doing okay down there?”

“Now now, shotgun, it ain’t nice to gloat. Or brag.” Mike brushed the back of his hand against Peter’s in turn. Peter’s size had left Mike’s ass tender in a way he wasn’t used to, but Mike hadn’t even thought about taking any Tylenol for the ache. He treasured the after-throb, the feeling Peter was still a part of him, and he loved the flashes of memory each twinge brought with it. He guessed if he were a chick, the memory would have him wet all day. _And craving more. Oh, wait. I am.  
_

“What? I meant your throat.”

“My _throat_?”

“Yes, from the way you were screaming.” Peter gazed straight ahead, his toffee-brown eyes on the others.

 _Oooh. That sneaky little—_ “That wasn’t a scream. A yell, maybe.”

“Oh yes, and your lip, the way you were biting down on it to hold the scream in. But your throat mainly, what with that nonstop moaning and shouting.”

“ _Pete—_ ” Mike stumbled as he walked.

“And that was me going easy on you. Huh. Well, we’ll see next time, when I don’t hold back, I guess.”

“Peter, _please_!”

“Because you’re not the only one who likes a challenge.” Peter turned that wicked, _filthy_ smile on him, brushing against Mike as he did so, adding to his discomfort.

“Wait!” Mike yelped. “Everybody, please halt!”

“Not there, no,” called Micky, showing no signs of slowing down, let alone stopping, at the wooden building, although he waved to two of Barney’s sons in response to their greetings. Mike waved back too, adding an apologetic shrug and point and thumb jerk meant to convey they were headed somewhere but on the way back he’d be in and sort out a gig and sorry not to have been in sooner. He doubted his mime skills were up to the job, specially not at the moment.

“Wait. You said a place to think things through?” he called to Micky. Because it looked like he was making for the steps up—

“Yeah and we’re almost there.” Micky started climbing.

“Here? On the pier?” Mike gestured at the wooden walkway above them.

“Nice rhyme. Write that down before you forget it,” Peter advised.

Mike couldn’t see the place being conducive to talking, much less thinking. Even on a Sunday, the long pier was never empty, its ramshackle boards—worse than the flooring in the pad—thudding and shuddering under the feet of people wanting snacks from the few food kiosks, heading for the small funfair part down the end or simply strolling there.

Micky turned left at the top of the steps, pointing at the huge old cream and red building. “Exactly here. Because it’s where we had our first talk and figuring-stuff-out session, remember? So it’s got a good vibe for us.”

Weird vibe, Mike thought again now as he had the first time he’d seen the building. “It’s Moorish,” Peter had said, describing the many arches that were a whole heap of doors and windows on its two floors, and the triangular windows on all eight sides of its three towers. Mike hadn’t understood at the time that the term referred to an architectural style, but he’d seen it didn’t just mean Peter wanted more of it, so he’d filed the new word away and looked it up as soon as he could.

Micky got behind him and Peter and urged them forward. “Yeah, the Hippodrome. Although I’ve never seen a hippo here. Or in any hippodrome. Huh. I wonder why the name?”

“Hippodromes are for horses. Because horses were once hippos,” Peter said.

Micky made his _oh, Peter_ face. Mike stopped, literally putting his foot down, refusing to take another step. He coughed, making Peter catch his eye and threw him a stern glance.

“Hippo is Greek for horse and words with that prefix caught on and stayed, although the word for horse evolved. Hippodrome, horse race course. Hippopotamus, river horse. For instance,” Peter gabbled, his eyes on Mike.

“ _Ohh._ ” Micky nodded. “Like I always say, you’re smart, Peter. You should explain stuff more.” He nudged Davy inside the huge domed building, the loud yet reedy carousel pipe organ calling him.

Peter went to follow but Mike caught his elbow, not letting him wriggle free. “Please,” he whispered. “Tell me why.” He knew Peter would understand.

Peter stood hesitant, sun dappled, his hair shining with gold but his eyes shaded. “It…comes from my upbringing, my father and his way of behaving with us. He’s a university professor and likes to debate statements or views, so every talk meant we had to have everything backed up with evidence and proof, ready to defend and argue our case or see it demolished. I never…liked that. It was easier to…not to get into stuff.”

Mike’s heart squeezed and he sought how to respond to Peter after that revelation. What to say? _Show, don’t tell_ , came to him. He held up his right hand with its odd finger. “My awkwardness about being misshapen, or odd, is a metaphor for me as a whole, really. That I don’t fit in. And yet in my career, I have to use this hand so much and so precisely and it’s on show, people looking at it? Like I’m flaunting it? Which is kinda like my musical ability, and the things I hope to achieve, that I feel awkward about too? So…there’s a lot of layers there I have to dig through.”

The slow smile that bloomed on Peter’s face made every word, every pang worthwhile.

“You doing okay there?” Mike asked, his grin making it clear the repetition was deliberate.

“I’m…torn, actually.” Peter stared at him, sun-gilded. “Torn between throwing you down onto the nearest flat surface and fucking you until you squeal or lying down _with_ you and holding you until you heal.”

“Babe, same!” Mike exclaimed, meaning it, even if his take on it hadn’t rhymed, him not thinking in rhyme as much as Peter seemed to. He didn’t know how much longer they’d have stood there, staring into each other’s eyes, oblivious to everything except seeing into and learning the other, if Micky hadn’t stuck his head out.

“Come on!” he commanded, dragging them inside to the massive old carousel that took up the center of the space. He produced the ride’s original and one and only brass ring that he’d been presented with and that guaranteed him free rides, and argued with the costumed ticket-seller that it included guests. Within a minute they were seated on carved, painted wooden horses and holding onto brass poles as their steeds moved up and down and circled round and round to the organ music.

The ride was almost as rickety as the pier, in an even worse state than when they’d convened here two years ago, having arranged to get together the day after meeting one another in a club. “Why here?” Mike asked, quoting himself from that meeting.

Micky, next to him, grinned. “You know, sometimes I wish we had taken that apartment on the floor above here that we met up to go look at? Bigger and cheaper than Beechwood.”

“Living over this noise?” Davy called over from the outside horse, asking the same question he had at the time, wincing anew at the wheezy organ tune.

“What noise?” Micky countered. “And free rides all day and night!”

“And that smell?” Peter added from in between Micky and Davy, wrinkling his nose at the frying food aroma from the kiosk taking up a corner of the seen-better-days building. “Piers are supposed to smell of salt water, or fish, maybe, but homemade potato chips?”

“Hey, that smell is delicious! And that booth being open late means never having to cook!” Micky argued. “Plus, cotton candy or salt-water taffy for dessert…”

“You know, when you said your dad had worked here for a week, I thought you meant he was a carpenter, or maybe a painter!” Davy chuckled.

Mike had thought ticket-seller, then, after listening to Micky speak a bit, an engineer. He hadn’t imagined the guy, an actor, had been shooting a film on location here, with kid Micky on the side-lines every day, eager to get in on whatever action he could. Maybe Micky needed to feel close to his dad, after yesterday? If Micky needed him to, Mike would suck it up, the up and down and round and round motion, the syrupy music—everything.

“Guys, you know one of the towers is vacant now?” Micky looked up wistfully. “Three floors, ceiling hatches, rope ladders to get between them? Imagine…”

“Nuh-uh. First group decision taken.” _Not to live here._ And okay, while they’d ironed out the group’s details of who would do what, how they’d live—together but not here—how they’d proceed—no manager and no agent—Mike doubted they’d be able to solve the case here.

“Chase had some theories, about what’s going on.” Peter caught Mike’s thought. “To do with rivalry, mainly. Between the police and the sheriff’s departments, for one, and competing TV stations for another. The opposing law enforcement groups could be wanting to make the other look bad so _they_ look good, and a competitor network could be working against CBSC.”

“With all due respect, as I know he’s your friend…” Davy trailed off as he caught a girl’s eye and twinkled at her. She got starry-eyed back, then burst into tears when the slightly older-looking chick with her slapped her and shouted that she was only fourteen, this was how trouble started, as she, her mother, should know, with the girl, her daughter, here as proof of that.

Davy hid behind the other three when the ride slowed and stopped and they were asked to vacate their horses. Mike was glad. Sitting astride like that? Not the easiest after last night.

“I’ve had enough of horses too.” Peter tried to hide his grin at Mike’s discomfort.

“Huh! I should have asked how your ass is, after yesterday,” Mike said when they were sitting two-by-two, facing one another in a carriage instead, the result of Micky’s persuasiveness with the attendant. “After the barrel racing, _jeez_ , you two! Not everything is connected to sex!”

“Fine. I wasn’t the one who got my ass pounded,” Peter replied, all huge-eyed innocence. “I rise to the trot, you see.”

“Before Micky bursts, trying to get to work on that, if I may continue?” Davy looked resigned to more music and rotating as they started up again. “Chase’s theories are a load of bollocks. I can get the cops and sheriffs aren’t buddies, but why would one side commit a crime they can’t solve, you dig? There’s no way they can restore the wrecked property, making them look failures! Whereas if something was ‘stolen’, say, and one side ‘finds it’ when the other can’t, they’d look good.”

“And the enemy TV networkth idea’th a non-thtarter,” Micky lisped, licking in the faceful of pink cotton candy he’d sucked off the stick of the kid on the horse behind him, having successfully distracted him to do so. “A rival would jutht bid more—thith is handing publicity to CBSC.”

“Except the network’s not getting much publicity from it, which rules out CBSC doing it themselves. All the coverage has been of the damage, the protests, not the TV station and certainly not the rodeo, real or possible televised version. The event is just no big deal here in California.”

“Yeah.” Mike agreed with Peter. “In LA at the moment, the new local TV stuff the audience is into is music programs.” He grabbed at the back of Micky pants when Micky almost fell, leaning too far out of the carriage to bite off half of the giant churro held by an unsuspecting boy ahead and to their right.

“Variety shows are the bomb, man! We oughta get onto one of those,” came thickly from around the rectangle of chocolate-drizzled fried starch and sugar Micky held clamped between his teeth like a weird long cigar. “Help yourselves,” he invited. Mike took a bite from the end, thinking as he always did when up close with Micky that for a slob, Micky smelled nice.

“Hey! That was a lot!” came from their aggrieved drummer.

“What d’you do, measure it with a ruler, man? And it’s for two.” Mike gestured for Peter to bite off half of the portion Mike now held between _his_ teeth, and wriggled when Peter did so, brushing his nose against Mike’s in the process.

“I’ll pass.” Davy eyed the small stub Micky had left. “He’ll only try and snog me.”

Mike laughed, more so at Micky not knowing what the word meant.

“The superior semen stuff that was spoiled…” Peter looked as surprised as the others did at his iambic alliteration. “Maybe it was a rival stock breeder?”

“No, babe.” Mike shook his head. “Someone got at the bull, remember. No rancher or stockman would injure an animal like that.”

Peter shouted to be heard over the suddenly louder music. Maybe the operator was trying to drive them out? “The crimes seem directed against the Eastmans, as if they’re a vendetta. That suggests it’s personal. So, someone connected to them who was hurt by them wants to hurt them in revenge?”

Mike blinked at him as the carousel slowed. “You ain’t saying I… Oh, like Chase’s mom? She did this?”

“Hey, you there, no dogs allowed!”

“We don’t have a dog,” Davy assured the angry ticket-seller. “It’s just Micky.”

“Yeah, sometimes I’m a werewolf?” called Micky. “I can see how you’d get confused.”

The blur of brown and black fur jumping into the slowing carriage was Mike’s only warning before Chase grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him out, his face a mask of fury. His other hand formed into a fist that he pulled back as he demanded, “You say that again about my momma. If you fuckin’ dare.”


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Mike stepped toe-to-toe with him and started him right in the eyes. He wouldn’t blink first. Never had, never would, and certainly not now, when he could see that the mix of emotions, of feelings, swirling in Chase’s eyes were confusing and weakening him. After a minute, in which his fellow Monkees formed a solid phalanx with him, Mike shrugged Chase off and rolled his shoulders to settle his shirt.

“It’s a reasonable assumption that this is personal against your father.” He didn’t break eye contact until Chase stepped back.

Scowling, Chase slipped off his hat, raked a hand through his hair and jammed his hat back on, his way of buying time. “Well it ain’t her, and I’ll prove it to you. After which I expect an apology.”

“Fine.” Mike shrugged. “We all will, right, guys?”

“C’mon.” Chase didn’t listen to their noises of assent, just turned on his heel and stalked out, making them scramble to keep up with him.

“Why do you all have to have such bloody long legs?” Davy moaned. “Just for once, can we deal with a shorter, smaller person? No? Just me then. Right.” He jumped onto Micky’s back for a ride.

“Ooh, not the fortune teller’s kiosk?” Micky hid his face in his shirt when they passed the booth out on the pier. “Only I’m kinda—”

“ _Scared,_ ” Davy fake-coughed.

“Banned. Under pain of cursed. From when she took a break last week and I…stepped in? I was trying to help! I could see my client wanted the guy with her to propose and so I…well, you probably heard about that brawl that broke out?”

“It’s okay. Look.” Mike indicated Chase at the payphone.

“Any o’you got any more shrapnel?” Chase asked, digging in his pockets. Frowning when they all turned to Peter and looked at his feet, Chase slammed a handful of change down on the phone and fed some in.

 “Watch me dial,” he ordered, beginning the number with 214, so, Dallas. “Hi, Momma,” he said a minute later, making a triumphant face at the group. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

Davy pressed the button for the loudspeaker and a woman’s voice demanded. “You okay, sugarbabyboy? And Dutch and April?”

“Fine,” Chase muttered, his brown eyes glowering darkly at them when they mouthed, “ _Sugarbabyboy?_ ” at one another.

“And your pa?”

“Fine. Well, there’s been some trouble. Vandalism. Theft. Goods destroyed.”

“But Charlie’s okay?”

She sounded concerned. Mike could tell the others thought so too. He nudged Chase. “ _Just because she’s not here in person…_ ” he mouthed.

Chase winced, but continued. “About the vandalism and stuff… Momma, you wouldn’t happen to know… I know you don’t. Dunno why I’m asking… Anything about…” His face bore the look of a man knowing he was digging his own grave.

“Charles Obadiah Eastman, you don’t think I had… How _dare_ you disrespect me, boy?”

“No, Momma, I—” He jammed in more coins as her diatribe continued. Peter handed him twenty cents.

“And use your loaf, son!” She was winding down. “Iffen Charlie gets any more business problems, I get even less help with mortgage payments, despite what he promised. I ain’t no fool and I hope I didn’t raise one.”

“ _Woman scorned_ ,” Peter whispered at Chase, pointing at the phone. Chase nodded.

“It’s just that…feelings, Momma, like jealousy, revenge…they get mixed up and—”

“ _Jealous?_ Son, you’re old enough to know the truth now. I promised I’d never say and help your father keep his pride, but well, I’m done saving his sour mug and it’s never good to live a lie. I left him. That’s right. I wanted to for a while. Ever since he stopped competing, he changed. His temper. Drinking. Erratic decisions. _Biiig_ ideas. Sug, no matter what I feel toward Charlie, I’d never do anything to hurt Charles. He was always decent to us.”

“I know, Mom.” Chase wound the cord around his finger, reminding Mike of Peter. Maybe all guys did that.

“Son, come on home,” Chase’s mother begged. “It’s not good for you there, abroad. I worry about the strange women and the foreign food and—”

“Oh, sorry, I’m all outta coins, Momma. Speak soon!” Chase slipped off his hat and mopped his brow with his sleeve. “Believe me now?” he demanded. “After that—”

“Humiliation?” Micky risked a pounding to suggest.

“Yeah.” Mike grinned, watching Davy jiggle the button to get unused coins returned. “She hasn’t changed any. Our apologies. But Chase, why’re you here?”

“Figured I owed Blondie a head’s up.”

“ _Blondie?_ ” mouthed Davy and Micky as Peter preened.

“You were a good sport yesterday, taking part after I tricked ya into it.” Chase clapped him on the shoulder. “The cops came by again.” He whistled for Dutch, who was eating something discarded on the pier. Dutch dropped it and bounded over.

“Huh.” Davy sighed. “I wish we had Micky trained like that.”

“Cool it, guys. We gotta get clued in,” Mike ordered. “The cops?”

“A bigger team, with shinier badges. Getting heat from the mayor, who’s getting his nuts busted by the convention center people and the tourism organizations, ’cause the city don’t look good? Told us they’re about to make a bust.”

“ _What?_ ” Mike dragged Chase to sit on a bench, taking Peter with them, leaving the others to follow.

“Yeah, they’re getting a warrant to search your house and the place where the protest group meets—they reckon they’ll find evidence. Mood they’re in, I reckon they will, too, even if there ain’t none, if you get me.”

Mike stared at Peter. He understood all right, understood the cops wouldn’t have any qualms about ‘helping’ things along.

“I also reckon you’d better get help,” Chase finished.

“Like…”

“I don’t know! A lawyer, a detective? Someone who can clear this up?”

“Chase, we ain’t got that sort of cash to throw around,” Mike scoffed.

“I know this is California, not Texas, but there must be someone who’ll do you a favor, or someone who owes you a favor and you can cash it in?” Chase suggested.

“You’re right—it ain’t exactly like back home.” Mike’s smile came twisted. “Except…when it is.”

His words hung, heavy in the food-scented, barely salt-smelling air of the pier, and loud against the music and voices of locals enjoying their Sunday there.

“Michael?”

He covered Peter’s fingers on his elbow with his hand. “Happens that I…we…do know someone we’re planning to do a favor for, and who’ll owe us in return.” He spoke before any of them, catching on in a flash, could interrupt. “And their return favor could be making this go away…instead of anything else they could do for us. For me.”

He couldn’t look at Peter as he spoke, afraid of what he’d see in his face. But Mike betted that any anger or denial would be overlaid by fear. _For Mike._

* * * *

“Let me do it!”

“Micky! This isn’t a damn game!” Peter’s uncharacteristic angry response had them all jumping.

“I meant because I can disguise my voice more. Just in case.” Micky’s voice was small.

“ _Peter._ ” Mike stepped closer to him. “That’s a good idea, Mick.”

“Sorry.” Peter subsided, moving aside to let Micky ahead of him in the line for the busy phone box in Downtown Santa Monica, their rationale being to hide in plain sight. “But I’m still against it. Yes, I know we voted and this vote was fair. But I don’t want you doing this.” _For me_ , he didn’t say.

“I want to.” _I’d do anything for you_ , Mike didn’t need to reply.

They reached the phone and he dialed. He remembered Honeywell’s drop line number, although he hadn’t expected it to click through various connections before someone answered.

“Request immediate controller rendezvous,” Micky said, copying what Mike mouthed at him, his accent nasal and female.

The phone went dead.

“Now what?” Micky whispered.

“Now we wait.”

 A line was forming behind them—the booth was in a busy shopping plaza. Davy turned and started whistling, then launched into a soft-shoe shuffle. Within seconds, Micky was singing along and clapping, getting those tutting and tapping their watches to join him.

“Peter, it was a sound decision. All it means is carrying out another mission, to get the result I originally wanted.”

“Deferment.” Peter swallowed. “Until then you’re at risk of being drafted.”

“So I’ll do another assignment soon.”

“You mean, _we_ will. Just like _we’re_ doing this.”

“ _What?_ Pete—”

Mike was still attempting to protest when they received a return phone call with the name, location and time, and later when they all went there, only to discover that while he’d always thought of himself as stubborn, and knew stubborn people—Davy, for one—nothing matched up to Peter’s mule-headed obstinacy.

* * * *

Micky flicked his flashlight beam around again, although most boats tied up on King Harbor, swaying gently on the water, shone lights. That plus the lamps in the marina and the moonlight made it easy to read the crafts’ names, even the ones moored up out beyond the rows, halfway to the barrier.

Why did it have to be a boat? Mike was surprised he didn't feel more seasick already at the sight of them bobbing and rocking on the wavelets.

“We got the right place and it’s after dark like they said, so why can’t we find the right boat?” Micky hissed.

“We can.” Mike took the binoculars. All he could make out was a patch of darkness anchored a few hundred yards out into the ocean, but he caught the glint of moonlight on glass. “There. Where at least one person’s looking back to shore.”

“That’s the _Birdwatcher_?”

“I guess.” Mike gave a half-chuckle. “Birdwatcher’s slang for spy. Ain’t that amusing.”

“No. How… Oh.” Davy figured it out when Mike slipped his shoes and watch off. “Well, I suppose it’s not too far.”

“All of us?” Micky bent to unlace his tennis shoes.

“Mick, no. You three will be more use in the open.” In jeans and tee, Mike handed the entire contents of his pockets over. “Pocket litter,” he explained. _Just in case._ “If I’m not back soon…do something, okay?”

“What?” Micky wailed.

“Peter will know. Just don’t go back to the pad. Head for the canyon, remember?” He turned, wanting to reassure Peter, only to see him, stripped to pants and shirt, raise an eyebrow at Mike then dive cleanly into the water without a word, leaving his possessions behind. With a curse, Mike followed, in a less-expert dive.

He was still trying to catch up with Peter to argue with him, turn him back, when they reached the boat. Mike stopped, treading water. “Peter… Okay. I get it. No more coddling. no more wrapping in cotton wool.” Although he didn't like it.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Peter replied.

It felt like being on trial. Mike drew Peter’s attention to the boat’s name along its side. _Birdwatcher_. Yeah, not funny.

“It looks deserted,” Peter commented,

“We know it’s not,” Mike replied, hooking his fingers onto for the side, Peter copying him.

Which was when they were grabbed, hauled dripping and struggling from the water, and slammed face down onto the deck. Practiced hands patted Mike down, but he didn’t care about that. No when he’d heard the distinctive click of a gun.

“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “We’re CIS assets!”

“I am offering no resistance,” came muffled from Peter.

“Who the fuck are you two long-haired weirdos?” demanded a voice.

“Stand down, men!”

 _Honeywell!_ Mike turned his head to the side. He didn’t need CIS Agent Honeywell scratching his ear to tell him to listen to what he said next.

“Hold still. I’ll easily…” Honeywell trailed off.

 _Ho…st…il…e. Yeah, no shit, Honeywell._ Mike risked a glance at Peter.

“These men were intrinsic in the capture of the Soviet spy known as Boris—”

“Who’s sitting on his fat ass in Leavenworth, giving us shit-all and demanding to be exchanged,” the bigger of the two other agents interrupted Honeywell.

“Not our fault, man. We did our bit,” Mike argued, at which he was yanked to his feet and shoved against the boat’s side. Now he felt sick, but the boat's motion was probably not the main cause. “And now we need your help.”

He ignored the laughter and jibes as he and Peter were taken below to a small cabin. He hoped Peter understood enough to keep quiet. It wasn’t hard to grasp that the other agents, including the one seated at the communication desk, weren’t part of what Honeywell was doing, what they’d gotten involved with, disseminating information he believed should be known publicly. Information that was, strictly speaking, classified, about illicit ops perpetrated against unwitting US civilians.

“You got two minutes,” said the bigger, meaner-looking officer. One minute later, his bark had the officer with the cans over his ears checking out the story Mike told. This man soon nodded confirmation.

“It’s all fun and games going up against ‘the man’ until you’re facing charges, huh?” The darker-haired agent laughed in their faces. “You lie down with the hippie dogs, you get up with free fleas.”

“So, you think we _owe_ you? Sorry, kid. That card ain’t in play.” The bigger officer grinned.

“Could we…take out another line of credit?” Peter asked, looking around at them all.

“Credit—” The bigger officer jerked his head into the corner, gathering the other two, where they huddled for a talk, Honeywell included. Mike caught him shaking his head, but the other two overruled him. The darker-haired one came back to them when they sat still dripping and cold on plastic chairs. “Ever heard of a little something called cointelpro?” he asked.

“Yes.” Peter nodded. “Covert surveillance and infiltration of groups you deem subversive, right?”

Mike stared bug-eyed at him.

“Minority rights organizations, left-wing parties, anti-war movements…that sort of group,” Peter continued.

“Exactly that sort of group.” The row of agents eyed him.

“All of which I belong to,” Peter finished, slowly. “I see. You want information on them. Me to get information on them.” His face fell as he considered. “I don't...seem to have a lot of choice but to agree, do I?”

It was Mike’s turn to keep silent, more out of shock than anything. He risked a quick glance at Honeywell and saw disbelief on his face too.

“Yeah? So you’d provide us with intel on them? Names, photos?”

“Well, if I wasn’t under all this LAPD stress…” The light in Peter’s eyes gleamed hard as he spoke. “And my roommates. Otherwise…” He nodded, his movement slow.

“Peter, no!” Mike gasped in horror that Peter would betray his principles, and for what? _Mike?_ That _he’d_ caused—

“I’m the one with his neck on the chopping block. This is my decision.”

And Mike hoped, really hoped, that the stiff edge to Peter’s voice wasn’t saying _payback_ and _how do you like them apples?_ But he didn’t know, because for once, he couldn’t read Peter.

Another huddle and another burst of static over the radio and the bigger officer was back. “Consider your ‘stress’ gone, kid. The LAPD have no jurisdiction over you and your little musical group now.”

“I see.” Peter stood. “So…”

“We’ll be in touch, yeah.” Giving them more space now, the officers escorted them back on deck.

Mike’s steps were heavy. He wanted to shout that Peter couldn’t do this, that Honeywell had to stop him, that this was all wrong. That _Peter_ was all wrong.

“Hey, could we borrow your rowboat?” Peter pointed at it. “We’ll leave it on the marina barrier for you.”

Mike had no idea why the CIS men handed it over. He was still expecting to get shot in the head when they sat in the plastic boat and the officers pushed them off.

“Peter?” He stayed the oars after a minute, his hands shaking too much to row very far. “How could you? What…what have you become?” _What have I made him become, with my double-dealing, my cynicism, my—_ Guilt hit him hard, made him say, “I …don’t think I know you. Not anymore. Perhaps I never did.”


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the warning above says, Mildly Dubious Consent.

Peter waited for a pause in Michael’s lamentations. “Ship the oars properly if you’re not going to row,” he advised, pointing at the oarlocks. “You’ll catch a crab.”

Predictably, Mike started to row at that, taking care not to touch Peter, not to bump his knees. While waiting until they were out of earshot of the _Birdwatcher_ , Peter pondered a little, mainly on his realization that he and Michael didn’t really know each other all that deeply, despite a two-year stint as roommates. For instance, Peter didn’t know exactly what Michael had done to get Judy, a girl who’d been into Peter, to back off. But he’d done something—Judy’s refusal to even speak to Peter when he’d called her after to see if she was okay had said as much. And when Peter had called again, the number had been changed.

But Peter trusted Michael, trusted that whatever lay behind it had been more than just wanting Peter for himself—he’d felt there was more to Judy than had met the eye. Peter had been tempted to test his hypothesis by hanging out with another chick. It would have shown if Michael had any interest in him. But there’d been no need for that last— events had moved on.

One thing that Peter did know about Michael though was that he needed to save face. Which meant handling this carefully. As in most things Michael. _Which…is probably exactly how he feels about me._ Peter laughed.

Mike scowled. “I don’t see one single thing to be amused about.”

“Um, you know how you hardly ever get to use song titles in real life?” He ignored Mike’s, “No,” to point to the harbor ahead. ‘“Michael, row the boat ashore.”’

“Hallefuckingluiah,” came in a sour rejoinder.

_And from a lament to a spiritual._

“I just don’t understand,” Mike continued.

 _And back to the lament._ Peter’s fingers plucked out a lament bass, a variant of a ground bass, denoting tragedy or sorrow. Remembering that a ground bass was known as obstinate bass made him laugh again. “Stop a second, could you. We’re going in circles anyway. We can drift back quicker on the flood current.”

“I never said I could row,” came in a mutter.

“True. Michael, you know I grew up in the countryside—when my parents settled there, after we moved a helluva lot—in an old farmhouse, on a big parcel of land?”

“Erm, yeah?” Michael confused by moonlight was a gasser.

“It was great. A river to swim in, hayfields to play in, fruit trees to climb, but a bit isolated for we kids. So we made the barn into a theater, for circuses and shows and plays. I was in most of the plays at school and high school and at college, I studied drama, as part of liberal arts, and I was in the drama society, too.”

“Shotgun?” Michael frowning by moonlight was adorable.

“My point being, as I think you’re getting to all by yourself, is that one way or another, I’ve done a lot of acting. We’re out of range of the boat now.” He left a pause, left Michael time to regroup, and threw him a face-saving line. “I know you studied acting too.”

“But…back there, to those agents…”

_Nope, still stuck in that groove._

“You said—”

“I didn’t say it positively.” Peter had learned from a master.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Just a quote.”

“So you _lied_ to them? To the Intelligence Services?” Mike leaned forward over the oars.

“No, I’ll give lists of names and photos. Just…not real ones. They didn’t stipulate that.” Peter made his wide-eyed innocent face, thinking what fun they’d all have concocting the stuff. Micky in a whole range of costumes for the photographs… “You know the thing they make you swear, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? There’s a reason for making you promise the whole trinity.”

“ _Je-sus!_ Holy hell, Pete!” Mike wheezed out a mix of a gasp and a laugh. “So, we’re gonna have the Intelligence Services mad at us now? Who knows where that’ll lead?”

“Pur-lease!” Peter scoffed. “Making sure our tracks are covered and that we get what we want from the CIS? That part’s easy, if you take one for the team.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll just have to flirt with Honeywell a little and he’ll make those goons drop this mole-among-the-hippies idea when the intel I feed back’s no use. And I said a _little_. It’s okay: you have my permission.”

“ _Peter!_ ”

“Oh, come on!  Don’t play dumb. He’s _so_ into you. I suspected it before and saw him drooling over you back there!” Peter pointed over his shoulder. “Look at it this way. God wouldn’t have given you those sultry, smoldering brown eyes and that sexy southern accent if he didn’t want you to use them, would he?”

“Peter,” Mike said, when he’d finished opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “Peter, I’m not sure I like this side of you. It’s ruthless, dangerous—”

“Yeah, you do. You’re so fucking turned on right now.” He smirked as Mike shifted.

“What’s the other part? If placating the CIS is one part?” Mike asked.

“We remove any bargaining chip that can be used against us over this affair. Meaning now we’ve got some breathing space, we can carry on what we were doing and solve it ourselves. Also meaning we can go home.”

“Ah. I get it. You’d do anything not to have to camp in the canyon, all in the same tent.”

“Despite how jazzed Micky is about it. Umm. Are we all caught up now? Good. So, row?” And he leaned back, legs stretched out toward Mike, his head tilted back, showing off his neck and throat, his arms outstretched along the sides of the boat so his wet shirt clung to his shoulders, pecs and biceps. He was well aware how much Mike dug them. Peter even hummed, trailing a hand in the water.

And when he looked over, Mike, predictably not rowing as ordered, was leaning back, although Peter would have betted he wasn’t aware he was mirroring Peter’s posture. Their legs tangled, Peter making the rubbing of his instep against Mike’s ankle, under his jeans, seem accidental. Shaking his head, Mike gave in.

“And the rowing—is that for taking my mind off of seasickness? Seems to have worked, like the adrenaline must have kept it off earlier.”

“Not quite.” Peter didn’t bother explaining about the Dramamine now any more than he had earlier. Michael’s strange beliefs sometimes manifested over medical matters. “I’ve just wanted one of these fiberglass shell dinghies for ages.” He patted it.

“Wut? But you said you’d leave it at the marina.”

“And I _will_. I didn’t say—”

“When,” Mike finished along with him. “Pete, you’re so goddamned tricksy! Like a little pixie in a storybook—you take words and you spin ’em!”

“A wonder story. A little tale from a long time ago.” Peter, pushed back into childhood, was as enchanted by Michael’s description of him as Michael seemed to be by him. His turn to copy Mike now, sitting forward when Mike did, beaming like him.

“I can’t get a line on your moral code,” Mike admitted, taking his hand. “You hate deception, but it’s okay to lie to authority when necessary? To fool the man? What’s that stem from?” He closed his fingers around Peter’s hand when Peter went to protest. “Okay, not lying exactly. Splitting hairs. In Bible class, when I was a kid, we’d have called that Jesuitical. A clever argument that’s not _really_ about the truth?”

“And that laxity probably explains why Jesuit priests have always been such sought-after confessors,” Peter mused, imagining kid Michael disagreeing over the scriptures.

“Never knew that.”

“The more secular take on it would be casuistry, solving moral dilemas by applying rules from one situation to a new and different one. It’s a part of ethics, for instance.”

“Or law, I’d guess?”

“Yes.”

“Pete?” Mike grabbed harder at his hand as a bigger wave rocked them. “This is a really interesting conversation!”

“It is! I’m really enjoying it.”

“Me too. Y’know, we just don’t get the chance to—”

“Rap deep,” Peter finished for him, their thoughts in synch, as usual.

“Yeah. I feel I’m getting to know you, crazy as that sounds after knowing you for over two years. I wish we could carry on this talk, but…” Mike indicated the marina’s barrier they were closing in on.

“Take another spin around the bay? Seems a shame to waste the moonlight.” Peter wasn’t joking.

“Don’t think we can.” Mike jerked his head at the two figures standing at the gap of the barrier. “But…would you like to get away together someplace, when this is over?”

“Just us?”

“Yeah, spend time alone, really get to know each other.”

“I really would. When?”

“Soon as things calm down here.”

There was no way not to react to the absurdity of it all, especially that last, and they were still laughing when Micky and Davy pulled the boat through the gap and helped them and it up onto the barrier, passing them towels with the marina’s logo on them.

“You stole _a boat_?” Micky kicked it.

“You stole towels?” Mike returned.

Micky waved a hand. “Everybody does it.”

“And a uniform? Because I don’t think we were gone long enough for you to have started working there.” Peter pointed at Micky’s white outfit and cap.

“What? _Oh._ ” Davy seemed to have just noticed.

“Davy, you’d better drive.” Peter hefted the fiberglass dinghy back to the car, Micky taking the oars. The central nervous system part of the meds Micky had slipped Mike would be wearing off now, leaving him drowsy, which would be compounded by the ebbing adrenaline.

“I wanna hear about you two being James Bond,” Micky whined.

“We’ll sit in back and I’ll tell you on the way.”

Peter did, despite feeling himself fragment and scatter, describing what he’d done and his plan, only faltering when he caught Mike’s eyes in the wing mirror. Not drowsy, as Peter had predicted; his look was cool and assessing.

Micky was still in hysterics, still making up ridiculous fake names and practicing faces for the photos when they reached the pad.

“Mick, Davy, thanks again. We’ll start tomorrow. Pete and I got some things to attend to right now.” Mike finished glancing at the other two and lanced Peter with a stare that brooked no argument. He took a step in the direction of their room, forcing Peter ahead of him.

“Is everything all right?” came from behind them.

Mike grabbed Peter’s ass. _Hard._ “Peachy,” he replied to Micky, his answer almost drowned by Peter’s squeal.

Inside their room he locked the door and thudded Peter into it. He looked down at him, his eyes dark. “So. Think you’re all that now, huh?”

“The big man?” Peter quipped, cupping himself. He’d wondered what form Mike’s response would take and this was better than he’d hoped for.

“Ha! Think you’re in charge now? ’Cause you ain’t. Unless...you wanna fight me for it.”

Peter shoved at Mike, to find himself slammed against the door, with Mike falling on him, his hands cupping the sides of Peter’s head and spearing into his hair. He seized his mouth in a kiss that turned bruise-hard in a second, a battle to dominate Peter’s mouth. When Peter could suck in breath, he pushed with his hips, and Mike thrust back, kicking at Peter’s feet to widen his stance, then shoving a leg in between Peter’s, making Peter straddle him. The friction burned white-hot within a second, and he ground down on Mike’s thigh.

Peter’s hands flailed, empty, until he grabbed at Mike’s T-shirt and scored his nails up Mike’s back. Mike hissed and slid his mouth from Peter’s, to bite at the side of his neck, then force himself lower and bring his teeth down where Peter’s neck met his shoulder. Impatient with that, he almost ripped the buttons from Peter’s shirt opening it to give him more room to work—and bite. Peter fought against slithering to a puddle on the floor. When Mike eased away, Peter chased him, trying to grind against him again, then against Mike’s hand when he went for Peter’s zipper.

The slap to his ass stilled Peter enough for Mike to strip him—not a lengthy task as Peter wore only two items of clothing. Had worn, he amended, when Mike flung the discarded shirt behind him and tugged his pants from him. Mike’s eyes were hooded, making Peter ask, “Like what you see?” He cheeped when Mike bent him face down over the bed’s footboard.

“I like it better now,” Mike growled, lifting a hank of hair from over Peter’s ear to deliver his reply. His other hand came to Peter’s mouth and all four fingers forced entry into his mouth. “Suck ’em. That’ll stop your backchat.”

Bent over, his head and torso pushed flat, Peter’s every last nerve zinged. He tongued and wet Mike’s fingers as ordered, bereft when Mike pulled them free. A second later they were at his hole, forging in, a blunt, intrusive jolt to his senses.

“I ain’t stopping until you scream for me,” was snarled in his ear.

Peter grabbed for a pillow to muffle the cries torn from him at being stuffed so full, so fast.

“I didn’t say you could do that.” The hard smack to his ass jostled the fingers in his channel right against his prostate and Peter shouted out his pleasure. “Yeah, I want them to hear you moan for me.” Mike’s shocking words sent a dark thrill through Peter. “Want them to know I throw you down and take you. Like you—”

“Need to,” Peter managed.

“Need me to,” Mike corrected.  

And God, he did, in ways couldn’t explain or even encompass.

“You like it,” Peter rebelled.

“I fucking _love_ it,” Mike corrected again.

Peter was iron-hard and leaking. He tried to grab his dick, which got him an almighty whack on his ass cheek and a dark, “ _Don’t._ You need teaching who you belong to.”

 _Fuck._ Peter’s not knowing how much of this was playacting just added to the heat burning him up.

Mike shifted, put space between them. but only to snatch up the lube. He yanked his jeans and briefs down and the sound of him slicking himself was unmistakable. The anticipation super-charged Peter’s already overwhelming arousal. Mike half-chuckled. “Got your ass good and red,” he crowed.

Hands on his ass spreading his cheeks was Peter’s only warning before Mike thrust inside him in a way he hadn’t since that first time, a week ago. He’d been…scrupulous, was the only word Peter could think of, since then, but not now. Now was _fierce_ and _power_ and _total_ and other absolutes that had Peter screaming into the pillow.

“Is…everything all right in there?” came hesitantly from behind the locked door.

Mike’s, “Oh yeah,” came with Peter’s, “God yeah,” and which turned into a long, continuous moan.

Mike thrust hard and long and deep. “Didn’t take me long to fuck the fight out of you. You’re one eager little slut.”

That had Peter wriggling against the bed, desperate for relief, only for Mike’s, “Don’t you dare come. I want you to fuck me after. _If_ you can,” to stop him.

Peter doubted he could, not when Mike changed to short, sharp strokes, pounding into him over and over, his cock a constant pressure on that nerve-filled spot within Peter that had him yelling and crying...and taught what it was to be fucked into the mattress by a ruthless, show-no-mercy Texan.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

“Hey…is everything…okay?”

Peter, leaning, arms on the counter, waiting for the coffeepot and tea kettle to boil, jumped, bumping both elbows. He hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him, hadn’t expected anyone to at this hour, and certainly not Micky. _God. Did we keep him awake?_ Probably, the way Peter had cried out a loud, high keening when his balls had tightened to a point beyond pain and he’d still been denied release, even with thrusting himself back onto the hard cock inside him, which had made him cry out more.

He’d wanted to make Mike moan in turn, in return, in retribution—his motives were too mixed to sort through—and when Mike had climaxed, riding the waves of a long, loud orgasm for what seems like hours, he’d slid free of Peter, who’d howled again at that. Mike had collapsed on the bed, lying down for Peter, and Peter had come with just one hard single thrust inside him. They’d fallen asleep or passed out like that in a sweaty, sticky embrace, still joined, and had still been cuddling close when Peter had woken up, tucked into Mike, his head under Mike’s chin, and Mike’s long arms and legs wrapped around him. It had taken a near-cold shower to get Peter’s eyes open and him moving that morning.

“Very okay,” he wanted to reply. But that hesitant tone caught at him, and turning showed him Micky looked drawn, with circles under his eyes, eyes that were shadowed and wary as though he’d been afraid to sleep. Micky needed things constant, Peter knew, and now it seemed he needed answers, despite how very ill-equipped Peter felt to provide them.

“Coffee?” Peter half-turned to get the pot. “Go grab the milk?”

“There isn’t any.”

“Check anyway,” Peter requested, busy pouring coffee and diluting it with hot water. With Micky successfully decoyed to the icebox, Peter sat at the table. Micky didn’t need to see him wincing as he lowered himself to a chair.

“Told you.” Micky joined him and took a cup. “Pete?”

“Yes. More than okay. We…Mike and I…were a bit selfish last night. We got carried away.” He couldn’t apologize for them having been loud—they weren’t sorry. The volume had been a big part of it.

“Uh-huh?”

“We both have complex psyches. Complex needs.”

Micky shrugged, looking very young and lost.

 _Okay, change tack._ “Do you know the play _A Streetcar Named Desire_?”

Micky scratched his head. “I guess I caught the movie last year, in a recent classics showing at the Patriot? I didn’t see much of it, though.”

“You wouldn’t have, at the Passion Pit.” So no point quoting the line from the play about there being things that happened between a man and a woman in the dark that sort of made everything else seem unimportant. Should he talk about animal ethology? About the battles between alpha males and the role of betas?

“Here.” He took the paring knife from Micky’s hand to buy himself thinking time, peeling an apple from the bowl for him. Micky liked him to do that because Peter could, and had the patience to, peel an apple in one long strip.

“So, wolves,” Peter began. Peter presented as a beta, although he preferred the term _peacemaker_ , until he…didn’t, and Mike was an alpha until he was…taken down. Peter smiled when Micky let out a muted howl in reply. Hmm. Maybe he should just say his and Mike’s kinks were compatible, leave it at that?

For the first time, he wondered what Mike was like with a woman. Overpowering, he’d bet. Would he consider eating out a chick unbecoming for a strong, macho guy? Or delight in taking her apart, making her come with his skilled tongue?  Peter enjoyed giving as well as receiving. He approached sex lovingly, he liked to think and— His sudden fierce desire to see Mike with a woman shook him. Mike dug tiny, dainty, huge-eyed girls with long hair. Blondes, to Peter’s brunettes, and artistic or creative, in some way, to Peter’s musical and offbeat. Peter could imagine the scene. He’d just watch, he thought, watch the chick come unglued for Mike—until he couldn’t any longer and had to join in. _Hmm._ How soon was too soon in a relationship to broach the subject of threesomes?

“Here.” Peter passed Micky the unbroken peel for him to throw it over his shoulder.

“ _S_?” Micky asked, twisting to look at the shape it had landed in.

Peter squinted too. “Yeah?”

“Like Sandra?”

Who’d finished with him. “Or another chick beginning with _S_.”

“And that’s really who I’m gonna marry?” Micky’s grin flattened itself against the rim of his coffee mug as he drank.

“That’s what I was told, as a kid. It’s an old superstition.”

“What letter did you get?”

“ _Z_. Always.” Peter laughed.

“ _Z_? What chicks’ names even begin with _Z_?” Micky’s brow corrugated as he ate a quarter of peeled apple.

“Nicknames do.”

“Oh. Hey, want me to rinse the peel and save it?”

“Please.” Peter added apple peels to tea or used them in soup stocks.

When Micky sat again, he looked more back to normal.

“So, as you heard, Mike and I sometimes make each other scream,” Peter ventured, regretting it when Micky’s eyes widened to twice their usual size. “When we play rough.” _There. Duty done, and what a weird version of ‘the talk’ this was._

“Oh.”

He didn’t understand. He might one day, Peter thought.

“But it was to do with Mike? And he’s really okay? Because I slipped him a pill. Seasickness stuff…”

“I saw you,” Peter reassured the gabbling Micky, wanting him to look up so Peter could see his eyes. “I saw your sleight of hand.”

“Hey, my hands aren’t slight.” Micky crammed a bit more apple in and held out his hands, going into schtick. “Because you know what small hands say about a guy.”

“I saw you slip the seasickness stuff using sleight of hand. You saw me see you slipping the seasickness stuff using sleight of hand.” Peter liked the alliteration and the sibilants. The rhythm was good too, almost a beat poem.

 “Oh no, I didn’t give him too much did I?” Micky glanced again at his watch, and pointed at the continued lack of Mike. “Pete, it’s not like I gave him enough to go Dramatizing. You know, tripping on—”

Peter filtered _No; he was sex-stoned_ , to, “He tired himself out,” cutting across Micky’s explanations of what he’d done, what he and Davy had decided when they’d all realized a boat would be involved.

“You slipped him a micky, Micky,” Peter summarized. “But real meds. Not one of your Micky micky concoctions. Oh. _Oh…_ Drugs! Being given drugs! But what drugs? No, not you. _Goldie._ ” He grabbed at Micky. “The bull! We need to know what it was given because that would tell us who could get them.”

“And who did it! That’s right!” Micky slapped him on the back. “Way to go, Pete! But how are we… We need the others to figure this out.”

“Hold on.” Peter’s grip on his arm stopped him leaping off to wake the missing Monkees. “Let’s make them breakfast. Brain food.” Mike would be hungry. Peter was starving. He levered himself up for a glance in the icebox and cupboard. Potatoes, a few bits of veg… “Feel like that scramble dish your mom makes?” Micky needed coddling; that much was obvious. “Let’s get to the store for what we need.”

“You and me?”

Guilt at not having hung out with Micky much this month had him saying, “Who else? And, race you!”

“What on?” Micky was already on his feet.

“Unicycles? Mini Hondas?” Either was the last thing he wanted but…

With a yelp of, “Minis!” Micky dashed to syphon some gas from the Monkeemobile to power the mini motorbikes, giving Peter time to finish his coffee and Micky’s apple, plus scrub and dice what bits of the potatoes and vegetables he deemed still edible and then remind Micky to shower and dress.

Not surprisingly, Micky won the race, and in the store managed to get an extra link of the smoked sausage for the same price. He dragged Peter away from the sauerkraut, ignoring his attempts to remember the Bratkartoffeln, Bratwurst and Sauerkraut weekend breakfast of his childhood. Back at the pad, their sautéing soon drew the others from their beds.

“What’s that great smell?” Mike, not morning grouchy for once, threw Peter a swift _all right?_ look. Peter nodded, making Mike come up to press behind him where he was cooking. Peter turned from the stove and Mike kissed him, a sweet, swift peck on the lips, and the smile Peter’s mouth tilted into under his made Mike’s lips turn up into one too.

“Oh, Pete made me take a shower,” Micky deadpanned, presenting behind his ear for inspection.

With a, “ _Hmm,_ ” Mike examined closely for dirt, and nuzzled his morning stubble into Micky’s sensitive skin there, making Micky crumple, giggling. He was so ticklish. Peter liked seeing their closeness, evidence of their intimacy. _Past intimacy._ Peter drew a firm line under it. He felt mildly curious rather than jealous about it, wondering if it was worth dragging details from Micky, next time he was stoned or drunk. It’d be easy to do and Peter would be interested in seeing how right his assumptions were.

“What did you two do?” Davy stared from the skillet of potato, sausage and scallion scramble to Peter and Micky.

“Sorry?” The accusation was close enough to Peter’s thoughts to make his face heat.

“In my family, we only cooked nice meals out of the blue like this to get out of trouble,” Davy explained.

“Oh, such cynicism in one so young!” Micky scolded in an old-lady voice, pulling out chairs for Davy and Mike with a French-waiter flourish. “And nothing. Unless you count figuring out our next move?” He paused for their reaction. “And so we need everyone’s brains working at full—”

“Scramble,” Peter finished for him, serving it. “And taste it before you put brown sauce or hot sauce on it.” He fixed Davy and Mike with a look. “And don’t even _think_ about ketchup, Mick.”

“Red sauce,” said Davy and Mike together. “Hey, thanks to the chef?” Mike prodded, before anyone could dig in.

“Chef _s_ ,” Micky corrected.

“Well, yes, but Pete’s got the apron on. And he looks so darn cute in it.”

“ _Mike?_ ” Peter had to interject.

“What? I always thought so.” Mike sprinkled pepper onto the edge of his plate.

“I’ve got a chef’s hat too,” Peter commented. He waited until Mike had a forkful of sausage and egg in his mouth before adding, “Oh, and you know Micky and I have got fireman’s uniforms?” Wide-eyed, he thumped the choking Mike on his back and got him some water.

“Go on, Peter? With what you were saying before?” Mike asked, when his eyes had stopped streaming and he could speak. He nodded when Peter had explained the line of inquiry they should follow. “Chase should be checking in any minute. We can ask him who came to examine the bull, and find out their address.”

He leaned over to fillet the slices of sausage from Peter’s helping of scramble, giving Peter his mushrooms in exchange. Peter stretched for the salt shaker, at the end of the table, to place it nearer to Mike, for his eggs.

“Ask Chase how he did,” Peter called when Mike, after bringing Peter his herbal tea and kissing the top of his head, went to get the phone. Chase hadn’t expected to win, but had hoped to rank high.

 “Placed fifth!” Mike informed them when he’d put the phone down.

“And there’s more good news, judging by your grin,” Davy said.

“Oh yeah. And for which, we’ll need your talents,” Mike answered him.

“To…”

“Distract the veterinarian who examined and took samples from Goldie Locks. So I can rifle through the files. Remember before—” He broke off.

Peter understood. Mike didn’t want to reveal in front of Peter that he’d gotten Davy to flirt with a cloakroom attendant so Mike could sneak past her and leave a package in a chick’s coat. Neither of them liked references to Mike’s secrecy and underhandedness.

“So I chat up the veterinarian. Bit o’ sweet talk, use the accent, the bod.” Davy preened, then frowned. “Hang on…”

“Yeah, it’s our local veterinarian, Dr. Mann!” Mike finished. “Davy, where’re you—”

“Going to get this chair.” Davy dragged it to Mike. “Then stand on it, so I can punch you good and proper, you—”

“No, man! Not _that_ Dr. Mann! He retired, and his kid took over the practice. Young Dr. Mann. Frankie!” Mike explained. “Davy?”

“Climbing on the chair now. Stand still—”

“Francesca! His _daughter_ , man!”

“Oh.” Davy climbed down and returned the chair. “How do you know all this?”

“Well, I kinda took Mrs. Purdey’s Pekinese there for her last week.”

“Oh, and that Peke would be called…”

 “I ain’t saying its name.” Mike scowled at Micky. “I still think you were a little shit for suggesting that to her when you know she doesn’t have a clue what it means.”

“ _Tang!_ ” Micky fell off his chair laughing. “Full name _Poontang_!” came from the floor.

“That was good of you to help Mrs. P.” Davy kicked Micky.

“Yeah, well, I kinda needed supplies from there too,” Mike muttered, catching Peter’s eye.

 _Oh. Of course._ Peter had never seen K-Y Jelly in drugstores. “Micky, you shot your load too soon,” he remarked, sending Davy into fits too. “You know Mrs. P’s thinking of getting a cat as well? You should’ve saved up that name for it.”

“Poon…tang…the…pussy!” Micky gasped, in full-blown hysterics.

* * * *

Micky was still sniggering when they returned later, Davy having gotten a date and Mike a copy of the papers in the file and a Pharmacopeia to look stuff up in. Mike banished them onto the sundeck to study Amanda’s evidence while he took over the table to study the report, make a list of any drugs given as having been found in the blood sample drawn, and research their uses and properties.

The three of them lay on their stomachs, the photos fanned out in front of them like a deck of cards and the paint samples in plastic bags in the middle. Peter was almost asleep.

“What’s wrong with lipstick?” Davy asked suddenly after a long silence.

“It…gets on your collar, and tells a tale on you?” Micky replied.

“And that’s a reason to ban it? Look.” Davy pointed to a photo of the graffiti at the rodeo. ‘“Ban the baton’.”

“Huh?”

“Baton is lipstick, right? It is in the theater for makeup. You know, the stick you twist up or slide up?”

“I don’t think it’s _lipstick_. Just the stick, or stick in general. Like Baton Rouge means red stick.” They both turned to Micky. “We used to laugh about it in Geography at school. Red stick? Oh, come on!” He indicated his crotch. “So, ban the stick?”

“Oh, _nightstick_. Truncheon.” Davy nodded. “Anti-police.”

“Except…here it’s called a billy club.” Peter scrabbled for another photo. “Look. Just as here we say legalize pot and not marijuana.”

Silence hung until Micky asked, “So where do they call a billy club a baton?”

_“Jesus, Pete! You get baton charged?”_

_“Billyclubbed? No. I ran too fast.”_

The scene played out in Peter’s memory as he sat and looked through the door at where Mike was gathering his pages together.

“In Texas,” he answered, slowly.


	20. Chapter Twenty

“What?” Micky swivelled to sit up. He grabbed at Peter’s elbow. “You’re not saying— _Mike?_ Like, out of…revenge, because Chase rejected him? Yeah, I saw their faces that other night and worked out what’d happened. I ain’t just a gorgeous face, y’know. So you think he wanted to hurt him and his father? _Peter!_ ”

“Micky! For God’s sake, cool it, would you!” Davy sat too and shoved himself into Micky, pushing him away from Peter. “Now move up and shut up. Give him space and quiet to think, yeah?”

Peter only realized when his legs started to fold into an automatic seated asana that Davy had moved Micky aside to allow Peter room to get into a position to meditate in. In the same heartbeat, he understood there was no need to sit and breathe deeply and contemplate this. “No,” he said, getting a hand to both Micky’s and Davy’s arms.

Because, okay, fine, on paper—or in an LAPD detective’s notebook—it could be made to seem that Mike, still flagellating himself for having made advances to Chase that Chase couldn’t return, or angry and bitter at Charlie Eastman for closing his son’s heart to the possibility of a loving relationship with someone of the same gender, had a motive for the damage and destruction the Eastmans had suffered.

But Mike hurting a friend? Causing distress to someone he’d cared about—still cared about—or to someone, father or son, who’d provided him with a refuge at a miserable time in his life? Not likely. Peter kissed that off without a thought.

“No.” He looked both of them in the eye. “That’s not what happened. You know that.” He waited for them, Micky particularly, to nod. “So hang loose, okay?”

“Dig.” If Micky could blush, he would have, Peter knew.

“You don’t want Mike hacked at you,” Davy warned.

“Okay, but if he didn’t—”

“Mike’s not the only Texan in town,” Peter answered Micky.

“Wh— Oh. _Ohh._ ”

Mike seemed to feel them staring at him—he looked up and out through the sundeck window at the trio. The expression on his face was already bleak, and what was coming would not lighten it any.

“This is delicate, okay?” Peter whispered. “It’s unpleasant and tough to deal with. So we’ll go gently.”

“Sure, Big Peter.” Micky tried a grin, but it didn’t match any of his usual ones. “Like Mike said, you’ll know what to do.”

 _Do I?_ He was still thinking how to handle things as Mike emerged.

“I got stuff I can’t really get my head around,” he started. He rapped the pages he held, then looked from one to another. “What’cha confabbing about there?” 

“Let’s start with our side of the investigation, for want of a better word. Look at these pictures.” Peter waved Mike down and shuffled photos of the graffiti along to him, taking a deep breath and envisioning a lotus flower unfolding, blooming. “I’ve been puzzling over the lines, or the edges, whatever you’d call it, of the paint. You remember the placards we carried at the protest? And the painting materials you saw at the workroom in the café?”

“I remember all the little pots and the paint brushes, sure,” Mike replied. When Peter nodded and waved a hand, indicting Mike should go on, he continued, “You guys paint your signs, paint slogans on them. It looked neat and all.” He shrugged.

“Yes, paint, brushes…” Peter tapped a couple of photos, needing Mike to study them.

Mike held one close. “This…these splatters. Dots, dashes, whatever. They look like spray paint. Not brush paint. Right?”

“I think so.” Peter leaned to trace the splatters, and the slogan itself. “Not something we use. So that’s something we can connect to the guilty party.”

“Sure, we’ll just go get ourselves a search warrant…”

“Mike?” Micky queried as he trailed off, examining the photos.

“I never really looked at these yet,” Mike said. “They were hanging up to dry on that line she rigged up in the bathroom and I ducked under them. Never studied them until now. Amanda said she took pictures of the slogans, legalize marijuana, ban the bomb…but this doesn’t say ban the bomb at all. I guess she didn’t read it right, or misremembered it. Well, it is a strange sentence.”

“What does it say?” Peter’s heart ached for Mike.

“I wanna say it’s a common phrase, one we hear protestors yell, or read in the newspapers all the time, especially with all the stuff going on on Sunset Strip, but…”

Peter watched the shadows flicker across Mike’s face, saw them darkening as they gathered.

“ _Marijuana. Baton._ I guess you figured they’re southern words.” When no one spoke, he took a breath and, still kneeling, straightened up. “I gotta ask and I’m _really_ hoping the answer’s no, here.” The attempted lightness in his voice was beyond forced. “That I hope none o’ ya—”

“Don’t be so bloody daft,” Davy said, before anyone else could speak.

“Yeah, Mike. You’re not the only Texan in LA,” Micky scoffed, then stilled, aware of what he’d done, the door he’d unlocked.

Peter inched closer to Mike, hoping he was ready to face what was on the other side.

“I know I’m not. I know…”

“Take your time,” Peter murmured to him, hating the weight that settled on Mike’s shoulders, bearing him down. He’d suspected Mike stored things in his brain, squirreled them away to examine and deal with later. Not that he avoided them, just preferred or needed to take his time, not dive in on the spot. Right then, he betted Mike didn’t realize he’d reached for Peter’s hand. He didn’t wince when Mike squeezed it hard.

“Just, this is heavy. It hurts, you know?” came Mike’s admission, the open vulnerability in front of the three of them surprising Peter.

Micky, on Mike’s other side, leaned into him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Davy, across from him, kneeled over to straighten up Mike’s papers for him. His help and support tended to take practical forms, which was why it jolted Peter when Davy stood, to sneak behind Mike, loop his arms around his neck and rest his chin on the top of his head. After another minute, Mike raised his head.

Micky patted the report and notes. “What did you find, Mike?” he asked.

“Stuff…that I guess connects to this,” Mike answered.

“Hey, let’s get into a thinking star. It always works, right?” Micky suggested.

“Good idea.” Davy moved and lay flat on his back. “Pete?”

He lay too, easing Mike down with him, putting himself in between Mike and Davy, with Mick opposite, the tops and sides of all their heads touching. Peter always enjoyed the closeness, and feeling the warmth of the others’ bodies and the hum of their energies. Could thoughts be transferred, like this? Or something more spiritual, through their crown chakras connecting? The thought of Mike transforming into Micky, say, or he himself swapping personalities with Mike made him smile. Hadn’t Micky been reading some silly sci-fi book about a couple who woke up to find they’d swapped bodies, their soul and personality intact but in the other’s physical body? What would be better, or worse?

The sundeck had always felt to Peter a little like being suspended over the sand, as if he were at one with the heat of the sun and the wash of the waves but a little removed from the hubbub of the beach. He hoped it was helping Mike feel grounded and at as much peace as possible now. “What do you want to do next?” he asked, keeping his tone low and even. “Or, rather, what do you think should be done next?”

“I should go talk to Chase.” Mike gave his hand a squeeze. “No. I mean _we_ should. This has involved all of us.”

“Too right! I’ve got mesself a guardian over this,” Davy reminded them. “Might have to be a page boy at his wedding, way things are going. Gawd. Carrying a basket of rose petals? Wearing shiny black shoes with a silver buckle? Ankle socks? A white ruffled shirt and blue velvet knickerbockers? No thanks.”

“That’s _very_ specific,” Peter couldn’t help observing.

“Would be—he’s got that entire outfit in the closet right through there,” Micky capped.

“If you’re quite done with the comedy…” Mike sat. “Are we all in agreement?”

* * *

Must be some sorta record, Mike thought. No arguments about the plan and not even any squabbling about who got to sit where on the drive into Hollywood.

“Hey, guys.” Mike slowed his steps to a stop among the sightseers on Hollywood Boulevard, before they reached Grauman’s. He’d never once seen the Walk of Fame deserted, not even now, on a Monday afternoon. “Let me do the talking, huh? I don’t want Chase to feel ganged up on, you know?”

“Sure, Michael.” Peter nudged his shoulders into his, and Mike was grateful, as he always was, for his solid presence. On stage, at rehearsal, in the pad…wherever. While Peter constantly took him by surprise, constantly caught him out, Mike could count on him. He only hoped Peter felt the same way about him. He was determined that this would be the case, the way things were, between them.

“Oh, man.” Micky took in the giant red Chinese pagoda façade of the theater, with its dragons and guardian lions.

“ _Grau_ man’s,” Davy corrected.

“No, I mean I _love_ this place. It holds special memories for me.”

“You’ve seen movies here, with your family?” Peter guessed.

“Yeah that and when I came here to a red-carpet premiere of one of Dad’s last movies here, the one about the quadruplets, two boys and two girls from the wrong side of the tracks who defeated all the odds and won the dance championship? Well, that premiere was where I lost my virg—”

“Bloo-dy _hell_!” Davy stared hard at Micky. “How did that even work? Like, one at a time, taking turns, or two at a time, like, say, ladies first or—”

“Jesus—not to the _quadruplets_! _God,_ Davy!”

 “Mick, some stuff’s best saved for your autobiography, you know? If you can bring yourself to remember it,” Davy finished on a mutter.

“But why is Chase here?” Peter asked, making Mike glad for some normality.

“Part of some sort of city tour organized by the rodeo sponsors and chamber of commerce people. To do with trying to get the rodeo finals held in LA as well as all that stuff about wanting to televise a weekly show. I guess.” Mike wasn’t really sure.

“Can’t see it being his bag. He’ll be glad to get called away.” Peter whistled.

“What? _Oh!_ ” Mike got it when Dutch bounded up from wherever he’d been waiting. “Go get Chase,” he ordered, taking Dutch to the pagoda entrance and giving him one last scratch on the neck before slapping his flank.

Chase was out within a minute, wearing jeans and boots and carrying his hat, his concession to a fancy lunch a clean shirt and bolo tie. He squinted around before Dutch led him to where they were waiting near a stone lion. “Hey, John Wayne!” He pointed at the square they were standing on. Mike hadn’t noticed. “I got my camera. Duke’s on my list, along with Tom Mix and Roy Rogers. You wouldn’t happen to know where they… What.” He looked from one to the other. “You sounded okay on the phone, happy you’d gotten the law off your backs, off to get evidence together…and I’m guessing you got it.” His face fell, his eyes losing their brightness.

“Let’s go over there.” Mike pointed to the steps at the side of the theater’s wing, out of the crush and semi-private.

“Wait.” Chase lit a cigarette before he started walking with them. “Am I gonna need a drink for this?”

“You got one?”

Chase shook his head at Mike’s question, sitting on a bottom step alongside Mike while the others took higher ones. “Congrats on your placing,” Peter said, leaning down to shake his hand.

“How’s Goldie?” Micky asked.

“Thanks. Still dopey. Doped, I guess. Couldn’t compete, of course. So we didn’t get a fee for that, and it knocks him down in the ranks too. That’s if he’ll ever be okay. When I think of what he was like before, on the circuit, ever since we got him. Who’d do that to a man’s animal? Seeing him so weak, Mike…”

Dutch whined and laid his head on Chase’s knees.

“Here.”

Chase frowned when Mike handed over the file of papers and notes and photos. Almost as soon as he opened it and glimpsed the medical report, he looked up at Mike. “Just tell me.”

“This ain’t gonna be easy to hear. I wish it was other, but it ain’t. Goldie, he’s not weak because he was injected with something to weaken him. He’s weak because he hasn’t been given the anabolic steroids and anti-inflammatories he’s been injected with for a while. Seems he’s been sickly for a good long time—I’d say since you got him. Probably before. Charlie was sold a pup.”

“Wut?” Chase grabbed at the file. “That can’t be right. I saw him in the arena so many times! Raring to go—”

“Stock-prodded into it.” Mike turned to the paragraph describing the searing and scarring to spots on the bull’s flanks.

“Someone used a Hot-Shot on him?”

“A…cattle prod?” Micky asked and Mike nodded. He whistled. “That’d make him charge out of the chute.”

“No…” But Chase’s denial wasn’t very vehement.

“The others, they don’t know much about supplying stock for rodeo.” Mike indicated the three of them. “Like how you need champions to breed from. And how you breed, how you normally do it live, with a contract signed in advance. Except, remember what you told me, you ain’t had no luck breeding a good bull from Goldie on the ranch. That the ranch ain’t doing all that well.”

“But here, there were samples already collected, right?” Peter asked, helping matters along. “With buyers coming for them?”

Chase crushed his cigarette out. “Well, not buyers with a contract upfront. They were gonna be auctioned. Maybe with a different stock of cows, it’d be better, the thinking was. I don’t—”

“Whose thinking?” Mike asked, although there was no need, not with what the look on Chase’s face told him. “Who’s the only one to handle Goldie? Who bought him? Whose business decisions are—”

“Hey!”

Dutch barked at the man standing before them. Charlie Eastman. Chase’s father. He must have been on the city tour and at the lunch too, and now here he was, his face red with fury.

“Get away from him!” he shouted. “All o’ you. You’re bad for him. Fucking peaceniks with your crazy talk, crazy ideas.”

“ _Pa?_ ” Chase stood.

Mike stood too. He didn’t want to do this, and betted Chase didn’t want him to do this, didn’t want to go through this. He wished he could spare his friend this, but could see no other way.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

“Mr. Eastman. Sir.” Mike gave a polite dip of the head. “You’re angry now, but you weren’t angry when Goldie was found ‘drugged’. Didn’t rant and rage then.”

“Or when I came looking for Chase, after the damage to your property,” Peter added. “You said Mr. Eastman had a short fuse?”

“ _Señor de mecha corta._ ” Mike, addressed, nodded.

“So I’d have expected him to come storming after the protestors, especially me when I returned to the rodeo. But you didn’t. Why?” Peter asked.

“Did it mess things up for you, when you realized Chase knew one of the long-haired hippie protestors, through me?” Mike continued. “So we weren’t just a faceless group handy to pin the blame on?”

“How much is the bull insured for? How much will you claim for the samples—” Davy started to ask.

“You don’t understand!” Charlie cried, the lines of his face anguished. “I ain’t doing it for me. It’s for the ranch! Since I stopped competing, I ain’t bringing in the cash and times are changing. Ranching’s changing. So I diversified. Stock contracting. But I had bad luck. I—”

“Can’t take the blame for your own failings? Your poor decisions? Lack of informed judgment? Ma begged you to study into what you were trying to do. I said to hire an expert, consultant. Anyone. But no.” Charlie stood, tall, straight, right in front of his father, who stumbled back. “You think you know best. That anything different to your ways is wrong. Any of us doing anything different is wrong.” He turned to Mike. “Saying I’m sorry does nothing. I know that. But I am. I truly am. You know what for.”

“You did this! You’re bad for him! Always were, you—” Charlie stepped right up to Mike and Dutch growled a warning at the man, showing his teeth.

“’S’okay, boy. Sit. I got this—” And Chase’s punch at his father, one Mike hadn’t seen coming, knocked him to the ground. It didn’t knock him out, although Chase could have. It was the equivalent of Dutch’s warning growl.

“I am ashamed of you,” Chase spat. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to respect you again, but that ain’t the case now and I don’t know when it will be.” He moved forward, and his presence kept Charlie down and shut off his babbling.

“I’m sorry too, Chase. Sorry you hadda learn this.” Mike meant every syllable.

“I think I knew already. But being forced to face it like this? That bites.”

‘“Even if you might never be ready, left to yourself.”’

Peter’s words startled Mike. It was weird to hear himself quoted like that.

“Yeah. I’m…glad, I guess.” Chase passed his handkerchief down to his father to hold to his bloodied nose.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t punch me,” Peter said. “And I guess you’re Mr. Short-Fuse now?”

His smile had Chase smiling too. “Wut, I inherit the mantle? No. I would never treat people and especially not an animal so poorly. But yeah, I’m going home, sort things out, see what I can salvage. Time I stepped up, out of his shadow. Rob’n—” Chase gathered him tight and hugged him, his hold strong and firm, even in the midst of the gathering crowd.

“Blondie…” Peter got mock punches and a slap to an upper arm. “L’il biscuit…” Davy got a hearty handshake. “Micky…” Micky got one too, and they all got a paw shake from Dutch. With a, “Come visit anytime,” and a final touch of two fingers to his hat, Chase was gone, his loping stride taking him far along The Walk of Fame in seconds, Dutch at his side.

“I don’t have a nickname,” Micky mourned.

“Oh, you do. We just can’t say it in public,” Davy told him.

“Are you okay?” Peter held Mike’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes.

“Yeah.” Mike rubbed his head on Pete’s hand. “Better n’him, anyway.”

Him being Charlie, who was shaking off the people trying to help him, and stumbling away. Mike did _not_ want to know what form the reckoning back at the Eastmans’ spread would take, once Charles Eastman senior was informed of his son’s misdeeds.

“Thanks.” Mike took the file and papers Davy had collected from where Chase had dropped them. “Come on. We did good. _Well…_ Whatever. Time to split.”

“So, an invite to visit?” Peter said, as they walked back to the car.

Mike shrugged. “One day, maybe? Together, I mean.”

“Chase seems…free now.”

 “Makes no odds. Not when you’re the one for me, and I’m yours. Because I am. Yours, I mean. If…you’ll have me.” He blinked at the wicked smile on Peter’s face.

“Oh, I’ll have you…anytime,” Peter told him and what he stretched to whisper in Mike’s ear made Mike trip over his own feet.

“We’re playing at the Duke Box tomorrow,” he reminded Peter. “Meaning we gotta rehearse in the afternoon, meaning we don’t have a lot of free time.”

“So…this evening. Tonight,” came Peter’s reply.

“ _Really?_ But…” Mike glanced at Micky and Davy ahead of them, striking poses for some pretty blonde tourists’ cameras. “Kids? We leave you money for pizza and cold drink, you’ll be okay by yourselves tonight, right, if we bug out? You can camp out on the sundeck. Or up on the roof,” he added, shamelessly.

“Or we could always get in a sitter?” Peter suggested.

“Babysitter please!” came in two distinct voices, accompanied by Micky rubbing his hands together and sticking out his tongue.

“A nanny’s what those two need, if it wasn’t too late for that,” Peter surmised.

“Nanny? Even Mary Poppins couldn’t do anything for that pair. And they’d only hit on her, anyhow,” Mike threw in.

“On Mary Poppins? Well, d’uh! She’s a top bird, mate,” Davy called over.

“Yeah, Mikey. She’s one foxy chick.” Micky shook his head as if he didn’t understand Mike.

“Fine!” Mike threw up his hands in exasperation, although…he couldn’t help agreeing. If you liked a dominant woman. Which he…on occasion did.

“Michael?” Peter’s eyes shone amber as though he were looking into Mike’s mind. “Why do I think there’s a story here?”

“Nuh-uh.” Mike folded his arms. “I’d have to be monu _mentally_ stoned or un _believ_ ably drunk before I got into that.”

Peter paused so he was just behind Mike. He cupped one ass cheek and stood tall to whisper into his ear, “Challenge accepted.”

* * *

Mike woke with a jolt, not remembering falling asleep after he and Peter had been talking late into the night, here in Peter’s friend’s shack in the canyon. When the heat had been on them, they’d all planned to camp out—hide out—here in the huge tract of undeveloped canyon land near the property, but he and Peter had come here alone, Peter’s friend having made himself scare from Monday evening until Tuesday lunchtime. Talking of Peter…

It didn’t take him long to locate his missing partner, not in a place this small, just one big room, plus bathroom and porch. The porch where Peter was leaning on the railing… _wearing his orange bunny footy pajamas_. The porch’s small overhead lantern shone on the blond hair not covered by the— _Jesus, God and all the saints_ —pointed orange cap with its pom-pom tail, perched on the back of his head.

Mike’s mouth dried at the sight of the treat waiting for him. “ _It must be Christmas._ ”

Mike only realized he must have spoken aloud when Peter replied, “I hope not.”

“And why’s that?” he breathed, approaching.

“Christmas comes but once a year.”

“And you want… You…” He couldn’t go on.

“Umm?” Peter turned, wide-eyed. Nothing to see here, just sweet little Peter watching the dawn bring the canyon to life, his glass of milk on the wooden table a few feet away—Peter who had _not_ been wearing that oh-so-not-innocent bunny rabbit all-in-one earlier.

“Then it’s my birthday, and I have a present to unwrap,” Mike whispered, standing flush behind Peter, nudging his head into Peter’s temple so Peter faced front again. “No wait, it must be Easter, for me to find this naive trusting bunny, harmlessly enjoying the dawn, right?” He pressed close to nuzzle Peter’s neck and nibble his earlobe. “All wrapped up in cotton, just waiting for me to come along and uncover him?”

The noise Peter emitted could only be classed as a squeak.

Mike ignored it in favor of nipping his way up Peter’s ear to its sensitive tip. “So if I were to touch you here…” He slipped a hand around to Peter’s crotch, cupping him. “And do this…” He eased his fingers inside the pajamas’ narrow vertical seam and flicked open a few of the buttons hidden inside it, choosing the ones positioned over Peter’s cock. “I wouldn’t get this sweet little creature hard and ready, for me to despoil?”

But he did, Peter growing erect first under then in his hand. And Mike delighted in it, that his slow, casual jacking of Peter’s dick plus his increasingly hard bites at the tip of his ear made Peter shudder under him, pressing back and gripping the waist-high railing hard.

“ _Tempting me,_ ” he whispered, right into Peter’s ear, squeezing his dick at the same time. “My sweet young thing, just waiting for me to come and fuck that gorgeous ass you’re showing off for me.”

He had to stop his words for Peter to moan. Mike loved how quickly he could fire Peter up, get him rock-hard and leaking in Mike’s hand. Peter deserved to have what he liked, after giving Mike this. “I _love_ my treat,” he assured Peter, bringing his other hand around to flick open more buttons on Peter’s all-in-one so he could tease Peter’s balls too. Peter’s head dropped back into the crook of Mike’s neck and his pre-cum slicked Mike’s hand, making it easier for Mike to work him, to stroke in hard, strong movements.

He knew how his voice, lower and huskier during sex, affected Peter, so he deepened and roughened it now. “That’s it, babe. If this is all for me, come for me now. Then I’ll take that sexy ass of yours. Take it sweet and slow.”

His hand, fisting Peter’s erection, was a blur, and the slap of wet flesh loud in the still air. That Peter’s dick and balls were poking through those cotton pjs made the act filthy, as Peter had intended—filthy and oh so arousing. Mike relished the broken cries Peter gave as his balls drew up tight in Mike’s hand and he pulsed and came over the hand Mike was using to bring him off.

“Oh, that’s gorgeous,” Mike crooned. “You’re such a good boy. And I must have been a good boy to deserve this present.” Peter’s knees were shaking already. Mike backed off a little to strip off his own pajama pants and use them to wipe his hands. He didn’t want to soil Peter’s sleepsuit any more than necessary as he slowly and deliberately unfastened the buttons of the drop seat at the back to reveal Peter’s ass, that wonder of soft tautness. He briefly wondered about getting Peter more of these all-in-one union suits, but for now he was more than happy with this one, especially as he got to stroke each inch of toned ass he liberated from it.

“Gotta get you… Oh, you little _miracle_!” Touching a finger to Peter’s rim showed Mike it was already lubed—Peter had prepped well for this. “See, I really think you’re not quite the innocent you play.” He bit sharply at Peter’s ear tip and slid his hand back to Peter’s spent dick.

“ _Michael?_ ” came in an alarmed-sounding question.

Mike hesitated for a beat and then another, until Peter rubbed against him. _Okay then._ “Shh. You know you want to. Want me to enjoy my present.” And his _enjoyment_ was giving soft strokes to the head, and nerve-filled bump of Peter’s soon-filling cock—and starting him climbing again. Mike circled Peter’s pucker, just briefly, before working first one finger, then more, into Peter’s channel, and the buck Peter gave almost dislodged Mike.

“Easy now, shotgun. I know you love gettin’ fingered. You deserve a treat, after giving me this. So I’m gonna bring you off again.” He chuckled at the wriggle Peter gave, trying to impale himself farther. “Look what I did. Made you into one horny little critter.”

It might have been too soon for Peter to come again, but Mike ignored that scruple just as he did his own discomfort, his own straining cock desperate to tunnel into Peter’s tight heat. “That’s it,” he crooned, slipping another finger into Peter’s hole and curling them just so to hit that magic spot inside him. He measured out the time in Peter’s gasped-out cries until Peter orgasmed again, half-curling away from Mike’s fingers in him and his knuckles blanching white where he gripped the rail in front of him.

“God, Peter!” Mike raised his voice over Peter’s panting and moans, knowing his words would inflame him more. “I know I should wait for you to recover, but you’re so goddam hot I can’t. That ass of yours squeezed my hand so tight, can’t wait to get my cock in you. Gotta fuck you now. And the way I’ve got you, you’re begging for it.”

He interpreted Peter’s noises as _please_ and _right now_ , making him touch his cock to Peter’s rim for a quick tease before he plunged in to bottom out in one deep, smooth movement. Peter held still, his teeth clenched. Mike understood. “Oh, babe, you’re too sensitive after?” he crooned in Peter’s ear. “Need me to go easy on ya?”

That had Peter pushing back hard against Mike, to receive each long thrust perfectly, which had Mike gripping Peter’s waist hard to pull nearly all the way out before driving back in again. His pace sped after a few strokes and he made sure to drag over Peter’s gland with each one, the cries both of them gave ringing around the canyon.

Long before his pace slammed into the hard, almost brutal taking of Peter they both dug, the pressure of Peter climaxing all around his cock tore Mike’s world apart at the seams. He moaned, his head falling forward onto Peter’s neck while his entire body became one long pulse, white-bright and gold-blissful. He stayed on his feet as long as he could before pulling out and sliding to the floor.

He eased into the space between a shaking Peter and the railing and got his mouth to Peter’s spent cock. “One more time. Come for me again,” he panted, looking up to see consternation and a little panic on Peter’s red, sweat-soaked face. He chuckled, the sound weak. “Fooled ya. Couldn’t if I wanted to.”

“ _Beast._ ” Peter slid to sit next to him, supported by the railing. He cupped Mike’s face to press his mouth to Mike’s still-gasping one, and their kiss was long.

“You’re the animal.” Mike indicated the bunny pajamas. “One sexy little animal.”

“And you…don’t prefer a rugged cowboy?”

“ _Shotgun?_ ” Mike peered into Peter’s face. “You can’t think I wanna be with—”

Peter’s smile was knowing. “Hardly. _I’m_ the one for you. _I’m_ not too pussy to take a dick.”

And that was just so… _Peter_ , and so… _Mike_ and so _needed_ and so _healing_ that Mike laughed, laughed until he cried and Peter held him as he did so, held him tight, as tight as he held Peter.

As close as he wanted to hold him and be held by him, for ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the fic!  
> 


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